[rpat] Links in draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp

[Sandy Ginoza <[e-mail]>]

Greetings all,

draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp-10.html> contains a number of links that are invisible to the user because they are not differentiated from the surrounding text (i.e., they appear in black, see #5071 <https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker/pull/5071> regarding "lighter styling on internal irefs”).  Note that the display is tied to a combined use of <xref> and <iref>, so links that typically appear in blue are now displayed in black (for example, in Section 2 <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp-10.html#section-2>, compare how the link to "Section 8.2" appears as opposed to the the links for "Oblivious Gateway Resource”).

Our understanding is that links should be easily differentiable from surrounding text so the reader is aware of their presence.  Do you think it's acceptable for this styling to appear in RFCs?

Note that the links in earlier versions of draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp-08.html> were distracting.  There was some discussion about this within the IESG, but excessive linking was not considered a blocking issue (see https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp/ballot/ <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp/ballot/>).  

If the lighter styling is not acceptable, it seems the authors should be encouraged to use <xref> to definitions and <irefs> more judiciously. 

Thanks,
Sandy