Re: [xml2rfc] [rfc-i] whose on first

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

On 20. Feb 2021, at 07:01, Julian Reschke <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Note that the <format> element was deprecated in RFC 7991 for good
> reasons: it had no proper docs, and was inconsistently used. If there's
> a use case for it, it should be written down properly, and then the
> element could be resurrected.

Interesting.  
I know of only one usage, and that is quite well established:  Providing multiple link targets that differ in their format.
Well, it sometimes was used for single links with the intention to give the format of the one target provided.

I find a lot of examples of the single link use in the RFC repository, the most recent one in RFC 8979 from this month.
RFC 8795 has one with
          <format type="TXT" target="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-teas-te-topo-and-tunnel-modeling-06.txt"/>
          <format type="PDF" target="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-teas-te-topo-and-tunnel-modeling-06.pdf"/>

What was the usage inconsistent with that?

(I would understand an argument that we don’t know how to render it in general, or that it has an attribute named “octets” :eyeroll:, but not that it was inconsistently used.  Obviously, RFC 7749/7991 was the opportunity to write it down less poorly.)

Grüße, Carsten