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

[Henrik Levkowetz <[e-mail]>]

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.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> xml2rfc mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/xml2rfc
>