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

[Tim Chown <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

On 8 Apr 2024, at 22:11, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:

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

Feel free to send it there :)

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]<mailto:[e-mail]> if you haven't already done so.

I haven’t, I perhaps rather lazily assumed raising it here would achieve that, but there is the bigger picture of the different formats and what metadata is associated with them and how or if that metadata appears in the document body or not.

(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.)

I didn’t realise there was a difference.  I assumed the RFC Editor would use the datatracker as the authoritative source.

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.

Why does it have to be immutable?  The html and htmlized versions change over time.  You could track the version history if desired.

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<http://rfc-editor.org/>. So they need to fix their bug. However, the correct place to start is https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4861.

Thanks, as above I didn’t know that the RFC Editor version was the real source.

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)

I think what I’d hope for is an authoritative (single) source that gives the content and metadata about a draft, and then renditions of that into formats where the rendered versions are consistent.  At the moment they aren’t.  We should probably be considering what people new to th IETf and standards documents make of it, as we (or rather you and John!) know the specific details and history that may not be obvious to such people.

Worst case, the Updated by bug needs a fix.

Tim


  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
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