[rfc-i] draft-iab-xml2rfc-03, "2.11 <boilerplate>"

[pkyzivat at alum.mit.edu (Paul Kyzivat)]

On 3/13/16 6:21 AM, Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor) wrote:
> On 3/8/16 6:45 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:
>> <http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-iab-xml2rfc-03.html#rfc.section.2.11>:
>>
>>
>> "Holds the boilerplate text for the document. This section is filled in
>> by the prep tool."
>>
>> (and it's defined to occur at most one time)
>>
>> This is mainly a question to the RFC Editor: before RFC 7322 (new style
>> guide), stream and RFC Editor notes have been placed in between "Status
>> Of This Memo" and "Copyright", thus a single <boilerplate> element would
>> have been a problem (example RFC 7111).
>>
>> Can we rely on Status and Copyright to be back-to-back in the future?
>>
>> (Back in the past, we also had auto-generated IPR related information in
>> the back of the document, but I assume we won't go back there?)
>>
>
> Yes, but with the caveat of potential requests for change from the IETF
> Trust or the IAB. I don't anticipate that happening any time soon, but
> remember that the IAB, as per 5741 and its successors, own the Status
> portion and can request it be moved. Similarly, the Trust can change the
> copyright info (but won't unless there is a good reason to do so).

This raises an interesting question:

What does that mean then it is the xml that is authoritative, not for 
formatted documents? In principle the positioning of these elements 
could be changed by formatters. If so, when the rules change, will the 
changes only apply to documents published after the change, or should 
they apply retroactively to older documents when they are reformatted?

	Thanks,
	Paul