Re: [Tools-discuss] Listing updating RFCs in RFCs

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

I think this discussion belongs as much on rfc-interest as here.

In line:

On 09-Apr-24 02:55, Tim Chown wrote:
> Hi Bob,
> 
>> On 8 Apr 2024, at 15:48, Bob Hinden <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> Tim,
>>
>>> On Apr 8, 2024, at 7:07 AM, Tim Chown <Tim.Chown=[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I was caught out this week looking at RFC 4861 as part of reviewing the draft on a new P bit for PIOs.
>>>
>>> I missed the “updated by RFC 8425” on RFC 4861 as I was looking at the HTML rendered version of RFC 4861 at
>>> https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4861.html

That is the RFC Editor's version of an htmlized old-style RFC, and apparently it has a bug. That needs to be reported to [e-mail] if you haven't already done so.

(I don't know why the RFC Editor and the datatracker don't use the same version of the htmlizer, but I imagine there is a good historical reason.)

>>> rather than the datatracker version at
>>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc4861/
>>> where you can see RFC 8425 (and RFC 9131) listed as updating RFCs which are missing on the HTML rendered version.  There was a clue I missed in that the 7th of 9 RFCs in the Updated by list had a comma after it, but no RFC.
>>>
>>> The text and PDF versions don’t show any of the updating RFCs for RFC 4861.

No. The plain text version is immutable by definition, and as far as I know the PDFs for all RFCs before RFC8650 are simply images of the plain text version and also immutable.

>>
>> The htmlized version:
>>
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4861 <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4861>
>>
>> Does show the list of updated RFCs in the sidebar.
> 
> Thanks, so should we consider the HMTL version as obsolete or no longer supported?
> 
> I don’t mind as such, but personally I won’t be looking at the HTML version again having been bitten here. Unfortunately it’s the version google search returns first, so many people will routinely find it.

As I said, I don't know why the two htmlized versions are different.

> Maybe the HTML version should have a clearer indication that the link to “Tracker” at the top is the authoritative source from which other versions can be found?  Quite a few people less familiar with IETF process may have no idea what “Tracker” means.

The *definitive* source for RFCs isn't the datatracker, it's rfc-editor.org. So they need to fix their bug. However, the correct place to start is https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4861.

Unfortunately we can't control what the search engines find first.

(The best source of the metadata is https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc-index.xml if you have the stomach for it. Or in human form, https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc-index.txt)

    Brian

> 
> Tim
> 
>> Bob
>>
>>>
>>> I’m wondering whether the updating RFCs should just be metadata to the RFCs, or be included fully in all RFCs in all versions.  It’s a little dangerous/confusing when you only see a partial list.  Or maybe I shouldn’t be looking at the HTML but rather the HTMLised version?
>>>
>>> Tim
>>> ___________________________________________________________
>>> Tools-discuss mailing list - [e-mail] - https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tools-discuss
>>
>> ___________________________________________________________
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> 
> 
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