[rfc-i] RFC Index Files Updates -- XML and HTML

[Bob Braden]

Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thanks for this.
> 
> Is there any reason not to add the stream info to the .txt version
> of the index?
> 
> Regards
>    Brian
> 

Brian,

This is the result of a 10-year old policy at the RFC Editor. After 
Joyce and I took over the job, the desire arose to add additional fields 
to rfc-index.txt. However, input from various people in the community 
convinced us that a fair number of hard-core Internauts had written 
their own code to parse the obscure syntax of rfc-index.txt and reformat 
it for their own purposes.  We feared that adding new fields to 
rfc-index.txt would screw these people.  We therefore decided to freeze 
the format of rfc-index.txt at the 1989 level, and instead make an html 
version (and later an xml version) with extended fields.  So all changes 
or extensions to the index format go only into the .xml and .html versions.

Now that XML has taken over the world, maybe this policy should be 
revisited.

Bob Braden