Re: [Tools-discuss] missing RFC numbers: 404 vs. "was never issued"

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

Daniel,

I agree that if an RFC is listed in the official RFC index as
"Not issued", that should be the reply from the tools site
instead of a 404. I recently generated a list of such RFCs
for another reason (attached FYI). Do any of those generate
a 404? If so, that's a tools bug.

You'll notice that the most recent one is 4637. More recent
gaps in the index are very likely RFCs where the number has
been reserved for an approved draft that is in limbo (MISSREF
or a perpetual AUTH48 for example). That's a normal situation
and 404 seems appropriate to me. Anyway, that's a question
for the rfc-interest list, I think, not here.

There are a few RFCs in your list that were issued in PDF only:
8, 9, 51, 418, 500, 598. So a 404 for the .txt files is no surprise,
but I suppose a redirect to the PDF would be possible.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 2018-12-12 09:12, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> I notice that in the tools.ietf.org interface (and in the rsync'ed HTML
> data), some RFCs (like RFC 3889) say explicitly that they were never
> issued:
> 
>      https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3889
> 
> ("RFC 3889 was never issued.")
> 
> However, other RFCs are simply missing (they return an HTTP 404).
> 
> Some of the gaps in the RFC series are in the xx00 range -- i think
> these used to be reserved for "Internet Official Protocol Standards"
> summary documents, and some are numbered xx99, which used to be "RFC
> summary" documents, both of which are now retired. (see
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7100).  
> 
> However, there are a lot of other 404s that aren't numbered xx99 or
> xx00:
> 
>   rfc8
>   rfc9
>   rfc51
>   rfc418
>   rfc530
>   rfc598
>   rfc3333
>   rfc3350
>   rfc3907
>   rfc3908
>   rfc4232
>   rfc4658
>   rfc4751
>   rfc4921
>   rfc4922
>   rfc4989
>   rfc5108
>   rfc5312
>   rfc5313
>   rfc5314
>   rfc5315
>   rfc5319
>   rfc5809
>   rfc5821
>   rfc5822
>   rfc5823
>   rfc6019
>   rfc6102
>   rfc6103
>   rfc6523
>   rfc6524
>   rfc6634
>   rfc6966
>   rfc6995
>   rfc7327
>   rfc7907
>   rfc8389
> 
> 
> For consistency, it'd be nice if either all of these missing RFCs would
> get the "RFC XX99 was never issued" treatment; or, they could all return
> a 404.  Is there some semantic difference we should infer for one thing
> over another?
> 
>      --dkg
> 
> 
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