Re: [Tools-discuss] RFCs TOC render in plaintext

[Jaime Jiménez <[e-mail]>]

Thank you all for the interesting discussion!

I was unaware of the previous discussions and I did not participate in 
them, sorry for that.
@Robert, producing a whole new RFC on RSWG for this purpose sounds a bit 
overkill for me.
I think I probably won't be able to fix it but, where is the link to the 
HTMLizer code? I could have a look.

Ciao!

Jaime

On 22.8.2022 16.44, Robert Sparks wrote:
>
> On 8/22/22 8:07 AM, Jaime Jiménez wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> this topic has been discussed before, but I'd like to raise it once 
>> again.
>>
>> The current default datatracker RFC template has a bug for many of 
>> our RFCs.
>> Draft versions of the same documents render the table of contents in 
>> html but only plaintext in the RFC.
>> The problem applies to ALL RFCs after RFC 8650 in CoRE WG. For example:
>>
>> RD RFC with plaintext TOC:https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9176
>> RD draft with HTML 
>> TOC:https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-core-resource-directory-28
>>
>> I have been told that the plaintext format for RFCs has changed and 
>> they are no longer paginated (why??)
>
> That is the root of all that you are asking about and the why is in 
> RFC7994.
>
> The _why_ is that it was what was published as a set of RFCs that went 
> through community wide last calls. The team that defined the output 
> formats had a contingent that believed very strongly that the text 
> should not be paginated, and that made it through as rough consensus 
> at the time. (Fwiw, I was in the rough). Heather and the IAB called 
> this change out _many_ times, on many lists before the docs were 
> published, and in Plenary sessions, yet here we are with people who 
> were present while it was happening (a very long time ago) still being 
> surprised.
>
> Drafts do not look this way because the IESG did not agree to change 
> the requirements for the format of text Internet-Drafts at the time.
>
> Your recourse now, should you really want to change the base 
> definition of the text output format for RFCs is to try to get 
> consensus to do so in the RSWG and publish a document that obsoletes 
> RFC7994.
>
> Lars is experimenting with a replacement for the htmlization of text 
> with a rendering of the html that looks like the text htmlization. It 
> would be worth looking to see if the ToC for that is any more useful 
> to you.
>
> RjS
>
>> and therefore there are no page numbers in the TOC.
>>
>> I see this as a bug, as many users still prefer the "htmlized" 
>> version over the new html RFC format and makes it pretty much 
>> unusable without pagination.
>> Could this please be fixed to how it was before the update?
>>
>>
>> Ciao!
>>
-- 
Jaime Jiménez