Julian,
Hi. I believe that the problem your pointing out is real, common, and
not so easy to solve.
First, you might regard the given definition of Updates as a
"best-effort" definition, with all that "best-effort" implies. ;-) I
am sure that serious suggestions on a more precise definition would be
welcome, but it is unclear how much effort one ought to lavish on
word-smithing here. The word "updates" in its common usage seems to
carry the desired meaning.
The RFC Editor and the IESG frequently struggle with the semantics
of the relationships among related RFCs. It is clear that the categories
"Obsoletes" and "Updates" are only the high-order bits of often complex
relationships. One could add "Partially Updates" and "Partially
Obsoletes" I suppose, but it is not clear where to stop or whether this
will really meet the need. We have recently been advocating the
creation of a series of area-specific "road-map" documents to
summarize these relationships; this would get around the limited
number of bits in the present categories.
Finally, we note that there is an alternative way to do business: the
IETF could shape its documents to fit the categories. That is
essentially what more formal standards bodies do. The IETF, for good
reason, chooses instead to let documents develop in the most expedient
fashion, and then notate them with (approximate) notations like
Obsoletes and Updates.
Bob Braden
*>
*> Hi,
*>
*> I'd like to see the concept of an RFC "updating" another RFC clarified.
*> Currently the draft says:
*>
*> Updates
*>
*> Specifies an earlier document whose contents are modified or
*> augmented by the new document. The new document cannot be
*> used alone, it can only be used in conjunction with the
*> earlier document.
*>
*> The second statement seems to be misleading. For instance, RFC2396 (URI
*> syntax) updates previous RFCs that also contained specific URI scheme
*> descriptions (such as "ftp"). Thus, it doesn't obsolete them. However,
*> RFC2396 clearly can be used without the documents it's updating.
*>
*> Regards, Julian
*>
*>
*>