Re: [irsg] Resending: Page numbers in RFCs questions / preferences

[Jeffrey Haas <[e-mail]>]

Ben,


> On Oct 27, 2020, at 3:32 PM, Benjamin Kaduk <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 03:38:08PM -0400, Jeffrey Haas wrote:
>> Ben,
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 02:51:17PM -0700, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
>>>> The input XML already provides blocks.  It should be fairly reasonable for
>>>> the tool to provide you something like "this is section X.Y, ¶5".
>>> 
>>> Like https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8815.html#section-3.1-5 ?
>> 
>> You seem to have missed the paragraph 5 symbol I added.
>> 
>> I regularly use the html anchor notation above. :-)
> 
> I am not sure which of us is confused -- the link I provided is directly to
> the fifth paragraph of the section (the "-5" suffix effectuates that
> functionality).  

No, I missed the distinction of the -5 vs. .5.  If so, certainly my primary use cases for such citations are covered.

Is there a guide that has any other such things I may have missed?

>> If it wasn't for the fact that our XML is of highly variable quality
> 
> Indeed.  And there does not seem to be much appetite for fixing that -- I
> had asked about even something as simple as consistent indentation for
> nested XML elements and got a response along the lines of "if authors care,
> they can put in the work to make the XML look pretty".  Which is
> unsatisfying to me, but I apparently failed to make a persuasive case for
> it.

This is a battle I'd have no stomach for.  Much like code indentation, it's a fight that only generates sore losers.  And much like code indentation, if you care - run it through your favorite indenter.  

That said, a tool that can generate such citations might still be of use if we continue further down this hole.  But I think if we have the ability to generate paragraph and section citations, we're probably covering the majority of the common use cases.

-- Jeff