[rfc-i] Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-hoffman-rfc-author-guide-00.txt

[Paul Hoffman / VPNC]

At 11:08 AM -0600 9/3/04, Alex Rousskov wrote:
>	I am somewhat puzzled by the recent exchange of e-mails 
>regarding your rfc-author-guide draft. It seems to me that you imply 
>that there is a significant difference between what draft authors 
>should produce and what RFC Editor will make out of their drafts.

Yes, exactly.

>	For example, draft authors may produce a draft without ToC, 
>headers, footers, proper sentence spacing, etc. Then, if the draft 
>is published as an RFC, those things get added or changed by the RFC 
>Editor.

Correct. It has always been this way.

>You are happy with that because it lets authors use tools that are 
>not aware of RFC requirements (e.g., easily format the entire draft 
>using an ordinary plain text editor).

My happiness is not relevant here. What I'm trying to do is to make 
clear what is needed, suggested, and optional for RFC authors.

>	Is that an accurate interpretation of your vision of "good practice"?

No. My vision of "good practice", which I hope comes through in the 
draft, is that ID authors must do all that is required, and should do 
(or at least consider) all that is suggested.

If there are tools that would help those, and keep clear which are 
requirements and which are suggestions, we should definitely expose 
those tools to RFC authors. I kept the RFC/ID authoring tools section 
as an appendix because it was an appendix in 
draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-08.txt; if folks here think that those 
tools should be more emphasized, I'm happy to move it into the body 
of the document and give more explanation and examples.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium