[Rfcplusplus] Qualified labels

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

Hi,

I don't think there's any disagreement that better labels are
desirable. I do think this would all be a lot simpler if we
could just agree to move to a single-stage standards track,
but since we must support status changes within the standards
track, including obsoletion, we are forced to have external
labels that are not in the archived format. That's an opportunity
as well as a challenge. So here's a proposal:

1) Continue to use the RFC series as today for multiple purposes.
But recognise more clearly that the number is an archival reference.

2) For all normal purposes, including citations, use a *qualified*
label. Rather than writing a formal definition, there's an example
of each qualifier below.

An advantage is that this can be retrofitted straightforwardly
to *all* RFCs, indexes, citation libraries, etc. And it
could be removed just as easily if it proves to be a problem
rather than a solution.

RFC8200-STD (or RFC8200-STD86)
RFC8414-PS
RFC5681-DS
RFC2026-BCP (or RFC2026-BCP9)

RFC7557-EXPT
RFC8394-INFO  (for IETF informationals) 
RFC7663-IAB
RFC7575-RSCH  (for IRTF informationals)
RFC8351-INDEP (for Independent informationals)

RFC2460-OBS
RFC1128-UNK
RFC1130-HIST

Regards
    Brian