[rfc-i] Comments about draft-flanagan-style-00

[Julian Reschke]

Hi there,

below some feedback on 4.8, "References":

>    o  References
>
>       [To be removed upon publication] This section is still under
>       considerable discussion.

Why "to be removed"?

>       The RFC style uses one of the many variants on reference styles.
>       See the examples in this document, and note the ordering for
>       multiple authors: the last author listed is treated differently
>       when referencing RFCs and I-Ds.

This is news to me. Could you elaborate?

>       URLs and DNS Names in RFCs

s/URL/URI/

>          The use of URLs in references is acceptable as long as the URL
>          is the most stable and direct reference possible.  The URL will
>          be verified as valid during the RFC editorial process.

That's a much appreciated change!

>          Personal web pages are not considered stable and will not be
>          accepted as a reference.

This might be hard to check in practice.

>          For 3 Authors or More:
>
>             [RFCXXXX] Last name, First initial., Last name, First
>                       initial., and First initial. Last name, "RFC
>                       Title", BCP/FYI/STD ## (if  applicable),
>                       RFC ####, Date of Publicaiton.

Typo.

>       Referencing Internet-Drafts
>
>          References to Internet-Drafts can only appear as Informative
>          references.  Given that several revisions of an I-D may be
>          produced in a short time frame, references must include exact
>          publication date, the full Internet-Draft file name, and the

s/file name/name/

...as some readers might assume the filename to contain an extension 
such as ".txt".

>          use the phrase "Work in Progress".  If the I-D referenced has a
>          version published as an RFC, references must also include the
>          RFC.

Why is the latter that a requirement?

>          Example:
>
>             [RFC-STYLE] Flanagan, H., "RFC Style Guide", Work in
>                         Progress, draft-flanagan-style-02, 01 March
>                         2012.

I note that this deviates from the format generated by xml2rfc; is that 
intentional?

Example:

    [Part2]       Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext
                  Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content",
                  draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-21 (work in progress),
                  October 2012.

So:

1) placement of "(work in progress), and

2) no day in date.

No matter what the answer is, it would be good to fix either the style 
guide or the tools.

>       Referencing Errata
>
>          The following format is recommended when a reference to an
>          errata report is necessary:
>
>             [Err1912]  RFC Errata, Errata ID 1912, RFC 2978,
>                        <http://www.rfc-editor.org>.

It would be awesome if the RFC Editor could assign a stable URI for each 
erratum. The format above is a disservice to anyone who actually wants 
to read the erratum.


Best regards, Julian