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

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

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.  

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document superceded it.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.