Re: [Xml-sg-cmt] Proposed message to rfc-interest about <postal>

[Henrik Levkowetz <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,

I believe we also said we'd permit <country/> as a sibling to <postal/> in
the schema, so that we later could deprecate and remove <postal/> entirely,
but still keep <country/>.

	Henrik

On 2021-06-06 23:56, John R Levine wrote:
> Here's what I plan to send out, with bits borrowed from Peter:
> 
> One of the changes to the xml v3 grammar since RFC 7991 is a new <postal> 
> element with a set of subfields such as <street>, <region>, and <code>. To 
> render addresses we use a python library that depends on an open source address 
> database originally from Google.  While tracking down a rendering bug, we found 
> that the rendering database is not actively maintained and has a long list of 
> unresolved pull requests.  We don't know of any other source of rendering 
> patterns.
> 
> But we don't see a strong reason for readers to need the full postal address 
> for RFC authors. Anecdotally, on rare occasions readers have used the postal 
> address but (a) the email address is primary since <postal/> is optional and 
> (b) readers likely have better ways to find contact information for RFC 
> authors.
> 
> The one part we care most about from <postal/> is <country/>.  This enables 
> people to do things like gather statistics about where RFCs originate, such as 
> https://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/d-countrydistr.html
> 
> Our proposal is to deprecate all of the <postal> elements other than the 
> <country/> element.  Authors can include them if they want, but they won't be 
> rendered and the RPC won't ask for them.  We think this leaves the useful bit 
> of info while avoiding a lot of work for minimal benefit.
> 
> If there are issues we've missed, please let us know.
> 
> R's,
> John
>