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

On Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 6:06 PM John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com> wrote:

> Brian,
>
> I look at the same information and come to a different
> conclusion (quite independent of the question of whether a poll
> at this point is a useful exercise)...
>
> --On Tuesday, October 27, 2020 07:56 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
> <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com> 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
>
> Cross references (and other references) to page numbers have
> been discouraged since at least RFC 1543 (in 1993) and banned
> soon after that, to the point that the RFC Editor from the last
> half of the 1990s would simply remove such references, replace
> them with references to section numbers, and complain when
> sections got too long for convenient referencing.  Nothing about
> restricting references to page numbers is new with the new
> format.
>
> > 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.
>
> However, getting from "references to information by page numbers
> have always been a bad idea, prohibited for a quarter-century,
> and even more obviously a bad idea as we move to multiple
> formats" to "any purpose whatsoever" is a big jump.  At least
> some of us have tools and macros floating around that are
> dependent on pagination and, as an exception to the
> "referencing" rules, it is still not clear (at least to me) how
> to build and format a document index using anything else (at
> least without a lot of effort).  There are even simple and
> obvious reasons: If one is going to print an RFC from the text
> form (or render it into printable form), something is going to
> do the pagination and being able to easily estimate the page
> count may affect how printing is to be set up.
>
> FWIW, the questions of "should documents be paginated" and
> "should the pages be numbered" are also separate ones.
>
> Moreover, the argument that pagination (and page numbers) are
> obsolete and useless for RFCs would be much stronger if the PDF
> form for new RFCs were not paginated (or at least not numbered)
> ... but it is both paginated and numbered.   And, if the issue
> is having things lay out well on many different types of
> devices, eliminating pagination (and headers and footers) to
> facilitate that is bogus: it would be equally or more reasonable
> to eliminate (or rethink) line breaks in running text, etc.   If
> one really wants things optimally formatted for a variety of
> different devices, then the right thing to do is to start from
> the HTML form and a well-designed style sheet or to go back all
> the way to the XML, not to try fussing with the ASCII text form.
>
> Conclusion: The main arguments that have been given for
> eliminating pagination, headers and footers, and page numbering
> --at least those based on different devices and references-- are
> mostly bogus.
>
> So, from my point of view as a fan of pagination in the ASCII
> form of RFCs, one who has never willingly referenced part of an
> RFC by page number, this seems to come down to something else
> entirely: if there is a goal to eliminate (or strongly
> discourage) the use of ASCII format RFCs in favor of the HTML or
> PDF forms (or building directly on the XML), then "no page
> numbers" and "no pagination" are among the first few cuts of a
> death by 1000 of them.    If not, this has all of the hallmarks
> of a gratuitous change to a format that has been useful to many
> people for a very long time.
>
>     john
>
> p.s. Just in case I'm the anonymous person John Levine's note
> referred to, I didn't just "not participate" in the discussion.
> It was made extremely clear that my input was not welcome, so
> clear that, after a discussion or two with Heather that I should
> spend my time in other ways.  If there were a significant number
> of others like me (and I have no way to tell, or even to guess)
> then claims that the no-pagination form represents community
> consensus lie somewhere on the scale between "dubious" and
> "bogus".
>

Disagree.  It is far past bogus.   How about "somewhere between 'false' and
'disingenuous'"?

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