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

[Tony Hansen]

Alex Rousskov wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Tony Hansen wrote:
> Absolutely. My statement only refers to RFC Editor and IESG reviews. 
> Posted drafts not submitted for publication have pretty much nothing to 
> do with RFC Editor and IESG reviews and are only subject to a few basic 
> requirements currently manually enforced by the Secretariat (e.g., the 
> version must be correct, and IPR statement must be present).

I'm glad we're in agreement.

> The IETF TOOLs team is working on draft posting automation. The 
> interface will ask the submitter to specify whether the draft revision 
> in question needs to be submitted for publication (besides being 
> posted). The set of automated checks and actions will depend on the answer.

Make sure the question differentiates between "eventual publication" and 
"publication of this version". Since you're also interested in getting 
additional checks before IESG submission, I think you should word it as 
something like "being submitted for IESG review and subsquent publication".

And when it's being submitted for review/publication, I think another 
big leap forward in automation would be to capture the source document 
(in a list of approved formats) at the same time you capture the version 
to be an I-D. That way the the rfc editor doesn't have to spend time 
converting the text version into nroff/xml/whatever, when the work may 
already have been done.

> The interface that TOOLs team is working on will be used for virtually 
> all IETF drafts (WG and not). The solution I currently advocate is to 
> validate the draft and _warn_ the submitter about detected violations. 
> This way, virtually any submitter will know what rules their draft 
> violates. That would be a big step forward, IMO.
> 
> The next step, requiring change in IETF practices (if not rules) would 
> be to request that RFC Editor and IESG refuse (by default) to review 
> drafts that do not pass IETF draft validator.

This all sounds good to me.

	Tony Hansen
	tony at att.com