In message <005701c3076d$6d626320$7f1afea9@oemcomputer>, "Randy Presuhn" writes :
...For Internet-Drafts, page-breaks are not required....
If this is true, when can we expect http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt to be updated to reflect this change?
Page breaks are highly desirable for I-Ds, because it makes it easier for people to print them out. They're much less necessary when things are moving to the RFC stage, because the RFC editor is going to strip all the formatting from the I-D and start from there.
Steve,
Interesting you say that. I know of very few systems and modern printers these days that handle "printing things out" which cannot generate the page breaks for printing in a dynamic way. Those devices and their drivers, and print-preparation programs, even tend to know how to differentiate between 8.5x11 and A4 paper, and two-up arrangements, and how to do the right thing. That was less the case when most printing was done on continuous-form paper and pagination tended to keep printed lines off the perforations. But I doubt that many of us are dependent on those sorts of devices today and those who are still don't have paginating drivers, or "pr" or equivalent pipes, available.
The I-D administrator does prefer that documents be paginated because the IESG has told the secretariat that I-D announcements should show the number of pages in the I-D. Maybe some adjustment there would be in order.
By contrast, the RFC Editor has, on at least some recent documents, complained about lack of pagination, lack of a table of contents with filled-in page numbers, etc. Like you, I would have assumed that they would be better off without those things on the grounds that they would just have to strip them off, making extra work, but that seems to not be the case.
john