Re: [rfc-i] Poll: RFCs with page numbers (pretty please) ?

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Tuesday, October 27, 2020 01:30 +0000 Ronald Tse
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Thanks John for the clarification. There is some confusion to
> me whether the intention is just about the TXT output having
> page numbers, or for the PDF to also have the same page
> numbers, and whether to use page numbers inside cross
> references. There was a also discussion about a ToC and page
> numbers, but perhaps that was a diversion.
> 
> If the discussion is only about the ASCII output having page
> numbers, I have no objection because it is (nearly) purely
> cosmetic (in publication and in usage of the text, being done
> by xml2rfc).
> 
> If having page numbers will require the PDF output to also
> have page numbers, this inevitably leads to some shared spec
> between the TXT and PDF outputs on the topic of pagination,
> which is less ideal, but since I assume that is the work of
> xml2rfc, it's not a concern to us as tool maintainers.

Actually, I think you have it a bit backward.  The PDF has page
numbers today.  More to the point, PDF is (almost) inherently a
page image format so there is no way to escape pagination.  One
could decide to not number those pages in the footers, or one
could eliminate the headers and footers entirely, but the page
boundaries are going to be there regardless.

However, as long as a strict discipline is maintained that
references (within an RFC, between RFCs, and whatever we can
do/encourage about external references to RFCs use are to
section numbers and not pages (and there Brian and I agree)
_and_ as long as we don't allow sections to become so long that
people seek other mechanisms, then whether the page numbers in a
text format agree with those in the PDF format or not is largely
irrelevant.  That issue is centuries old: if I reference a
chapter by number in a book, that reference is typically stable
for different printings and formats (and often but not always
between editions).  But the page numbers often are not, so,
unless the people doing the layout are _really_ careful, using
the index from, e.g., a hardbound copy and trying to apply its
numbers to a paperback that uses different size type and page
layouts is, to use a technical term, just plain dumb.  And
external references that use page numbers need to be very
careful to specify exactly what form is being referred to.

> Adding page numbers to cross references can make reading
> confusing — since the cross references between the paginated
> and flowed versions will render these references differently.
> It's doable, but again this requirement ties the paginated
> versions (TXT and PDF) together for consistency.

And, again, this is why there has been a long-term prohibition
in the RFC Series against using page numbers in cross references.

> Of course, if the PDF output is simply an enhanced PDF-ized
> TXT version, these aren't really issues.

But two of several advantages of the contemporary (xml2rfc v3)
PDF version is that it can contain and render pictures easily
and that, if characters are used outside the ASCII repertoire,
they are rendered correctly as well.

best,
    john

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