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

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 12-Jul-19 09:51, 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".
> 
> 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.

Two versions on the same day is not impossible. For an actual case, I once did this:

<!-- ********** This reference is specifically to version 07 of the draft and is therefore
     ********** hand-crafted instead of using the I-D bibliography. -->

<reference anchor='RPL-07'>
<front>
<title>RPL: IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low power and Lossy Networks</title>
<author initials="T." surname="Winter" fullname="T. Winter"/>
<author initials="P." surname="Thubert" fullname="P. Thubert"/> 
<date month='March' year='2010'/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-ietf-roll-rpl-07"/> 
</reference> 

You can see the eventual result, which was not 100% satisfactory,
in https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6294

    Brian
  
> 
> 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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