Re: [xml2rfc] xml2rfc online: references to I-Ds and associated dates

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Henrik,

This was definitely from the v2 formatter.  If it is fixed in
v3, that seems like a satisfactory answer and I'll work around
it in the interim.

thanks,
   john


--On Friday, July 12, 2019 15:16 +0200 Henrik Levkowetz
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi John,
> 
> On 2019-07-11 23:51, John C Klensin wrote:
>> Hi.
>> 
>> I happened to look today at the reference produced for an I-D
>> by xml2rfc (at least by the online version at
>> https://xml2rfc.tools.ietf.org/ )
>> 
>> The XML for the relevant cited I-D says (irrelevant material
>> elided and the identity of the I-D changed to avoid
>> distractions):
>> 
>>   <reference <reference anchor="ID.draft-ietf-foo-bar"
>> 	 target="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-foo-bar
>> 	 /"> ...
>>     <date month="June" day="12" year="2019" />
>>     </front>
>>   </reference>
>> 
>> The output is "June 2019".
> 
> After looking through various output formats, my conclusion
> here is that this is the output from the v2 text formatter,
> not the v3 text formatter.  The v3 text formatter renders the
> date with day, month, and year if all 3 are given.  So going
> forward, it seems that this has already been addressed
> (assuming we leave the v2 formatter untouched at this late
> stage in its life cycle).
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> 	Henrik
> 
>> 
>> Now, independent of what the RFC Editor decides to do with the
>> reference entry when/if the document gets to them [1], while
>> the document in which this is embedded is still an I-D, it
>> can be very important to the reader to know which version of
>> the I-D was cited and, of course, two or more versions of an
>> I-D in the same month is not uncommon.  
>> 
>> Authors who are happy with month and year can presumably just
>> leave the day out of the XML.  But, if an author believes the
>> day is important enough to include in the source file, why is
>> that part of the date being suppressed?  Is there any hope of
>> fixing that, which would revert things to earlier behavior?
>> 
>> best,
>>    john
>> 
>> [1] It is a completely separate matter from the above and
>> probably a topic for another list and another time, but the
>> reality, IMO, is that there are two types of I-D references
>> that might appear in an RFC.  One is a recent draft that is
>> still, or might reasonably expected to be, under active
>> development.  For those, the current "work in progress" form
>> is appropriate.  I'd still argue for explicit version numbers
>> and dates, by they are probably of limited utility.  The
>> other is a document that is being referenced for historical
>> context, has typically been expired for years, and for which
>> it is clear that no further development will occur, possibly
>> because the referencing document superceded it.  If we are
>> going to allow references to such I-Ds at all (IIR, for many
>> years, we didn't) those references need to be complete with
>> accurate dates and version numbers.  In addition, claiming
>> that they are works in progress, especially when the text of
>> the document in which the citation is imbedded says that they
>> are obsolete... well, I think the technical term in the
>> bibliographical world would be "plain silly".  But, again,
>> that is a different set of issues from the above and not an
>> xml2rfc problem, at least until policies change.
>> 
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>