Re: [rfc-i] Poll: RFCs with page numbers (pretty please) ?

[Ronald Tse <tse=40ribose.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks John for the clarification. There is some confusion to me whether the intention is just about the TXT output having page numbers, or for the PDF to also have the same page numbers, and whether to use page numbers inside cross references. There was a also discussion about a ToC and page numbers, but perhaps that was a diversion.

If the discussion is only about the ASCII output having page numbers, I have no objection because it is (nearly) purely cosmetic (in publication and in usage of the text, being done by xml2rfc).

If having page numbers will require the PDF output to also have page numbers, this inevitably leads to some shared spec between the TXT and PDF outputs on the topic of pagination, which is less ideal, but since I assume that is the work of xml2rfc, it’s not a concern to us as tool maintainers.

Adding page numbers to cross references can make reading confusing — since the cross references between the paginated and flowed versions will render these references differently. It’s doable, but again this requirement ties the paginated versions (TXT and PDF) together for consistency. 

Of course, if the PDF output is simply an enhanced PDF-ized TXT version, these aren’t really issues.

_____________________________________

Ronald Tse
Ribose Inc.

On Oct 27, 2020, at 9:15 AM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:

--On Tuesday, October 27, 2020 00:32 +0000 Ronald Tse
<tse@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

My two cents: why don't we just run a poll to see what the
"consensus" is?

There are some other issues with polls that people have
addressed so I won't repeat here, but...

To me, standardizing page numbers is the wrong direction —
one of the features of XML RFC is to allow rendering content
into different formats. Having page numbers for the ASCII
version is fine (it's only being done by xml2rfc anyway),
but requiring these numbers inside the XML is putting the cart
before the horse.

Unless I have missed something important as I have skimmed this
thread, no one has advocated anything that could be described as
"requiring ... numbers inside the XML".   We had paginated and
numbered RFCs all through the lives of xml2rfc v1 and v2 and
still have paginated and numbered I-Ds, none of them requiring
numbering within the XML source.  The issue here, at least as I
understand it, is that we have three output forms for RFCs: PDF
(inherently page-image and paginated), HTML (inherently
producing output that is line-flowed and unpaginated although it
can certainly produce other forms as rendered results), and
text.  The latter was originally supposed to be preserved in as
close to the historical ASCII text pages as possible but the
powers that be decided that the conversion from the XML should
retain the fixed-length lines but drop pagination and headers
and footers with line numbers.  AFAICT, it is only that last
decision that is under review / discussion here.  

And, again, if the PDF form did not have those headers and
footers with page numbers on the latter, I'd be much more
sympathetic to arguments that page numbers were harmful (or
confusing, etc.) and should hence be suppressed in RFCs.  And
even if one accepts page numbers as evil, that doesn't make a
case against paginating and retaining headers and footers in the
text format.  But I think I'm repeating myself so should stop.

  john