--On Monday, 21 April, 2003 14:01 -0400 "Steven M. Bellovin"
<smb(_at_)research(_dot_)att(_dot_)com> wrote:
In message <005701c3076d$6d626320$7f1afea9(_at_)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