[Tools-discuss] structured contributor section --- auto-reference to DT/Person?

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

Some year or so ago I asked if our XML format could accomodate a structured
form of the contributor.  There was various discussion (ratholing, alas) on
how different WGs would use it differently, and how to game the system, etc.

It turns out that we already have this feature.
In the kramdown, one can do:

contributor:
  - name: Bugs Bunny
    email: [e-mail]

which results in XML like:

    <section anchor="contributors" numbered="false" toc="include" removeInRFC="false">
      <name>Contributors</name>
      <contact initials="B." surname="Bunny" fullname="Bugs Bunny">
        <organization/>
        <address>
          <email>[e-mail]</email>
        </address>
      </contact>

It occurs to me that it might be nice if we could connect the contributors
directly to a DT /Person/XYZ page.   That would sure make any kind of
mechanical collection of the data really really really easy.
It's right now, easy: take the email address and find it in the DT list of
emails for the people.

But, on my side, the authoring side, I often three things wrong:
 1) I don't know how to get the right accents and/or non-english UTF-8 right.
 2) My notion of <organization> could be obsolete.
 3) What if I credit the wrong person because names are similiar?

On the contributor side, it would be nice if they knew that their name was
there, in part so that they could object!

So I'm thinking that it would be cool if we could do something like:

  <?ietf-dt include="[e-mail]" ?>
  [Not sure how I'd do this in kramdown. New "ietfdtemail:" tag or something]

to get the contributor and/or author information sucked in documents.

Would this be helpful, or am I just trying to be too cute?
This is just stuff to code, no changes to the XML scheme required, AFAIK.

--
Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide