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Re: An Internet Draft as reference material

2000-09-20 05:40:02
At 14:34 20/09/2000 +0900, Lee, Jiwoong wrote:
Dear all

What do you think about "de facto" that many technical documents
are currently using Internet Drafts as referece material?

I've seen next two cases:
1. An Internet Draft refers to another Internet Draft.

Common. It means that if the reference is normative, the I-D cannot be published as an RFC before the other. If both refer normatively to each other, they must be published at the same time. (If the reference is not normative, the draft name is replaced by "work in progress" when the RFC is published. Then, sometimes, the draft is lost...)

2. A book refers to another Internet Draft.

Stupid, but nothing the IETF can do about it.
In electronic books, the Right Thing would be to include all drafts cited as appendixes; in paper books, this might add too much to printing costs.


I'm not sure of the next case. Any body observed this?
3. An RFC refers to an Internet Draft.

Never (except as "work in progress", as noted above - and then the draft is not mentioned by filename).
--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, alvestrand(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com
+47 41 44 29 94
Personal email: Harald(_at_)Alvestrand(_dot_)no