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

[Fred Baker]

I would agree that people that are parsing rfc-index.txt should  
probably be using the XML version.

On Aug 18, 2009, at 8:24 AM, Bob Braden wrote:

>
>
> 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
>
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