[xml2rfc] Compacting an ID reference

[petithug at acm.org (Marc Petit-Huguenin)]

Nicolas Williams wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 05:23:16PM -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>> ID references tend to be long and make for long reference tags and high 
>> indents in the reference section:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> Is there a simpler way?
> 
> Not that I know of, but I'd really like one (maybe some can be done via
> XSLT?).  In particular I'd like a way to change the reference anchor --
> "I-D.<stuff>" is really, really ugly and user-unfriendly, while
> "BTNS-C-API" is much more readable.
> 
> The reason references work this way is simple: each reference needs a
> unique anchor, but there's no way to assign that other than to use the
> I-D's filename as the basis for the anchor name, plus, you include the
> references via XML entities, without a way [that I know of] to modify
> the object being included.

Here's how to do this with XSLT.  First you need to use Xinclude to include your
references, then you can put the Xinclude statement inside a map element with
the new anchor that you want:

"[...]
  <section title="Acknowledgements">
    <t>Look at the nice references <xref target="BTNS-C-API" /></t>
  </section>
</middle>

<back>
  <references title="Normative References"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
    <map anchor="BTNS-C-API">
      <xi:include
xi:href="http://xml.resource.org/public/rfc/bibxml3/reference.I-D.ietf-btns-c-api.xml"
/>
    </map>
  </references>
</back>
[...]"

Then you need the following xslt document (dup.xslt):

"<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
	<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />

	<xsl:template match="map">
		<xsl:apply-templates select="reference" />
	</xsl:template>

	<xsl:template match="map/reference/@anchor">
		<xsl:attribute name="anchor">
			<xsl:value-of select="../../@anchor" />
		</xsl:attribute>
	</xsl:template>

	<xsl:template match="* | text() | processing-instruction('rfc') | @*">
		<xsl:copy>
			<xsl:apply-templates select="@* | * | text() | processing-instruction('rfc')" />
		</xsl:copy>
	</xsl:template>

	<xsl:template match="@xml:base" />
</xsl:stylesheet>"

You can use xsltproc for this:

$ xsltproc --xinclude -o new.xml dup.xslt original.xml

And then after running xml2rfc on it:

"9.  Acknowledgements

   Look at the nice references [BTNS-C-API]


10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [BTNS-C-API]
              Richardson, M., Williams, N., Komu, M., and S. Tarkoma,
              "C-Bindings for IPsec Application Programming Interfaces",
              draft-ietf-btns-c-api-04 (work in progress), March 2009.
"

-- 
Marc Petit-Huguenin
Personal email: marc at petit-huguenin.org
Professional email: petithug at acm.org
Blog: http://blog.marc.petit-huguenin.org