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

Hi again,

It turns out that our initial assessment was wrong.  Thanks to Paul Hoffman for pointing out that it is the use of format=“none” that results in “lighter styling on internal irefs” and that format=“none” is deprecated by RFC 7991 [1] (more on this below).  For example, format=“none” causes links to Oblivious Gateway Resource to appear in black.

    <li>a method for forwarding these encapsulated messages between
    clients and an <iref item="Oblivious Gateway Resource"/><xref
    target="dfn-gateway" format="none">Oblivious Gateway Resource</xref>
    through a trusted <iref item="Oblivious Relay Resource"/><xref
    target="dfn-relay" format="none">Oblivious Relay Resource</xref> using
    HTTP, and</li>

draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp has been moved to AUTH48 as RFC-to-be 9458.  You can view the effects in the HTML; see item 2 of the introduction [2].

While format=“none” is deprecated by RFC 7991, Henrik provides rationale for keeping it; see
Henrik’s implementation notes [3].  It also appears in version 3 of the XML vocabulary as implemented [4] (see related discussion in issue 17 [5]).

Our question remains the same, do you think it's acceptable for this styling to appear in RFCs, even though links are expected to be differentiated from surrounding text so the reader is aware of their presence?

Thanks,
Sandy 

[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7991.html#section-2.66.1
[2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/authors/rfc9458.html#section-1
[3] https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-levkowetz-xml2rfc-v3-implementation-notes-13.html#section-4.4.17
[4] https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-rswg-xml2rfcv3-implemented-02.html#name-format-attribute-2
[5] https://github.com/rfc-format/draft-iab-xml2rfc-v3-bis/issues/17

> On Oct 6, 2023, at 12:52 PM, Sandy Ginoza <sginoza@amsl.com> wrote:
> 
> Greetings all,
> 
> draft-ietf-ohai-ohttp 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 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, 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 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/).  
> 
> 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 
> 
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