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

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 27-Oct-20 08:10, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> Brian:
> 
> RFC editor can easily check that new RFC will not have references to
> other RFCs with page numbers.

That is only one of the many ways in which ambiguous page numbers could be harmful.

> Its also perfectly easy to have only one rendering of page numbers, so
> therre won't be inconsistencies of page numbers on official IETF pages.

I don't get it. Web sites don't have page numbers. We agreed during the whole process of designing the new RFC format that HTML is the most desirable presentation format. Page numbers make no sense and have no value in HTML.
So why bother with them in txt, which is now a legacy format and not very useful for new RFCs? (PDF is an oddity, since it's basically page images, so its page numbers will always be a source of confusion.)

You may have noticed that rfcdiff removes page breaks as its first step, and there's a reason for that: pages are irrelevant even when comparing plain text. As soon as you go to flowed rich text, they are even more irrelevant.

Maybe it's because I was brought up on paper tape rather than punch cards, but I can't see why anybody cares about pagination in 2020.

Regards
    Brian

 
> 
> Cheers
>     Toerless
> 
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 07:56:36AM +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> As Julian Reschke observed on the rfc-interest list, since the
>> new RFC format was implemented:
>>
>>>  page numbers should not be used to refer to parts of the
>>>  RFC, because page breaks vary with output formats
>>
>> So I can only see confusion if people use page numbers for
>> any purpose whatever. So it doesn't matter if people want
>> page numbers; they're now useless. So I won't be answering
>> a poll, and I don't think the results are interesting.
>>
>> Regards
>>    Brian 
>>
>> Regards
>>    Brian Carpenter
>>
>> On 27-Oct-20 07:01, Toerless Eckert wrote:
>>> Since about RFC8650, newer RFC will not have any renderings with
>>> page numbers on {datatracker,tools}.ietf.org. See explanation from
>>> John Levine below.
>>>
>>> Not having followed the details of the RFC/XMLv3 standardization process,
>>> i was surprised by this because i think there is no reason to
>>> have additional renderings, maybe even only on tools.ietf.org that
>>> do include page numbers (and technically it does not seem to be a problem
>>> either). 
>>>
>>> If you care to express your position,
>>> i have created a poll for this, please chime in there:
>>>
>>> https://www.poll-maker.com/results3188562x294441dA-98
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>     toerless
>>>
>>> On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 01:35:43PM -0400, John R. Levine wrote:
>>>>> Could you please explain why RSOC does not want to permit the ability
>>>>> to have paginated RFC output options ? Also, where and when was this
>>>>> discussed with the community ?
>>>>
>>>> It was discussed in the multi-year process leading to the IAB
>>>> publishing RFCs 7990, 7991, 7992, 7993, 7994, 7995, 7996, 7997, and
>>>> 7998 in 2016. I'm sure you know how to find the discussions in the
>>>> archives.  Henrik knows all of this and I cannot imagine why he did not tell
>>>> you the same thing.
>>>>
>>>> I am aware there is one recent RFC author who did not participate in
>>>> the process at all and has been complaining that the text version of
>>>> his RFC doesn't have page numbers. I've explained this to him more
>>>> than once, and see no reason to waste more time on it.
>>>>
>>>> R's,
>>>> John
>>>
>>> .
>>>
> 
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