[rfc-i] "canonical" URI for RFCs, BCPs

[Joe Touch]

Paul Hoffman wrote:
> At 9:18 AM +1300 1/28/10, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> On 2010-01-28 05:35, Joe Touch wrote:
>>> Julian Reschke wrote:
>>>> Joe Touch wrote:
>>>>> ... The /info pages are neither canonical nor normative as well. There
>>>>> is no
>>>>> requirement for what it contains, or how that info is presented.
>>>>> ...
>>>>       "Information about the current status of this document, any
>>>>       errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
>>>>       http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc<rfc-no>."
>>>>
>>>> (see <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5741#section-3.2.3>)
>>> If I were citing an RFC's status, errata, and how to provide feedback,
>>> then that is indeed what I would cite. But *none* of that information is
>>> either canonical or normative. None if it is required to cite the *RFC*
>>> itself.
>> Exactly. Formal citations of RFCs issued in ASCII will always remain
>> as citations of the ASCII version, for ever. If we ever do change to
>> .fubar as the new canonical format, that will not change anything for
>> the .txt RFCs back to RFC 1.
>>
>> Of course, the http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc<rfc-no> form of
>> reference is highly useful, but *not* for formal archival citations.
> 
> This thread started as a request for the canonical URI for RFCs and
> BCPs, not for archival citations. Some people want the canonical URI to
> be the same as the archival citation; others want it to be more useful
> than that.

I don't understand what a "canonical" pointer to an RFC is except the
text URL.

Information *about* the RFC is a different matter.

As Brian said, both are useful, depending on the context. AFAICT, only
one is *canonical*.

Joe

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