On 2007-01-29 18:08, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> I should begin by thanking Brian for producing this document, both
> originally and in ION format.
>
>> An ION (IETF Operational Note, see RFC 4693) is open for public comment
>> on the ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org list. Comments should be sent by 2007-02-12.
>>
>> Please see
>> http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/drafts/ion-procdocs.html
>
> I'll limit my comments to a "huh?" and a "grrr"...
>
> "Huh?" - this document refers to IETF BCPs by RFC number, not by BCP
> number. The text says "Most of the cited RFCs are BCPs. RFC numbers have
> been used rather than BCP numbers, for convenient lookup."
>
> I'm having a hard time understanding what lookup mechanisms are less
> convenient for BCPs than for RFCs
My assumption, maybe false, is that a lot of people have RFC mirrors and
relatively few have BCP mirrors.
Presumably anybody who mirrors the RFCs will also mirror rfc-index.txt, which
includes the BCP numbers. It's one additional file to look at, but there's no
need to have a BCP mirror to look up documents by BCP number.
Also, my xml2rfc skills don't extend to
knowing whether I can directly cite BCPs in xml2rfc and get pointers
to the BCP and not the RFC. I'm willing to be educated on that point ;-)
The "bibxml" collection of RFC reference information includes BCP and STD
seriesinfo but AFAIK there is no way to make that appear as the reference
anchor. Short of creating your own references, I think the best you could do is
something like <xref target="RFC2119">BCP 14</xref>, which will get you "BCP
14 [RFC2119]".
I think this is pretty much a dealbreaker for using BCP numbers as the primary
indicator of a citation.
More generally, I have a problem with normative cituations to BCP and STD
numbers since the underlying document can change. That's arguably OK for an
informational citation, but IMO normative references may have version
dependencies that need to be taken into account.
Ned
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