As Jari notes below, the IAB will be issuing a call for community review
of a set of drafts that detail the evolution of the RFC format. We
expect that call to occur within the next few weeks. New revisions of
some of the drafts will appear before the call is issued, but the scope
of the expected changes is not large. The IAB welcomes early review
comments on any of these documents.
Robert Sparks - RSOC program lead
On Jan 27, 2016, at 7:31 AM, IETF Chair <chair(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org> wrote:
For background, the RFC Editor and the IAB have been
working on the evolution of the RFC format. The IAB
will be sending a number of documents soon out
for review. At the same time, the tools team have
been working on what the new format requires
from the tools. Both the documents and the tools
requirements are available from the reading list
below.
The IESG has discussed what this all means for
the IETF documents. The evolution is important
for the IETF as well, and we look forward to
being able to use possibilities in the new format.
The IESG wanted to offer five points:
1. Please review the documents and send
feedback to the rfc-interest list at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/mailman/listinfo/rfc-interest
or the authors.
2. We would like to see the new format be
available as the base format for Internet
Drafts as well, supported by the relevant
tools, and usable by each of the RFC
streams as needed. Each stream may
of course have a policy on what content or
format features they prefer.
3. We expect the RFC Editor, the IAB, and
the tools team (incl. IAOC support) to make
the above possible.
4. From an IETF stream perspective, we are
in eager waiting mode. Once the format
definitions and tools are in place, we
will (among others) want to try the
new possibilities in IETF stream
documents. From a careful engineering
stand point we would like to start
small, and gather experience on
using the new format and tools. There
will be implications on how we review
documents, for instance.
5. Existing I-D submission using text
only will likely stay on for a long time
if not indefinitely, so old methods can
also be used as needed or desired.
Comments appreciated, as always.
Jari Arkko for the IESG
Reading list:
1. The big picture
- - Flanagan, H., "RFC Format Framework",
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-rfc-framework/
2. The underlying vocabulary
- - Hoffman, P., "The 'XML2RFC' version 3 Vocabulary",
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-xml2rfc/
3. The outputs
- - Hildebrand, J. and P. Hoffman, "HyperText Markup
Language Request For Comments Format”,
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-html-rfc/
- - Flanagan, H., "Requirements for Plain Text RFCs”,
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-rfc-plaintext/
- - Hansen, T., Masinter, L., and M. Hardy, "PDF for
an RFC Series Output Document Format”,
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf/
Note that the filename may change to an IAB document soon.
- - Brownlee, N., "SVG Drawings for RFCs: SVG 1.2 RFC",
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-svg-rfc/
4. Generalized requirements
- - Flanagan, H., "The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs",
https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-iab-rfc-nonascii-00.pdf
- - Flanagan, H., “CSS Requirements for RFCs”,
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-rfc-css/
5. Workflow and tools (note that the examples draft will
not become an RFC, but is necessary for the project)
- - Hildebrand, J. and P. Hoffman, "RFC v3 Prep Tool Description",
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-rfcv3-preptool/
- - Hoffman, P. and T. Hansen, "Examples of the ‘XML2RFC'
Version 2 and 3 Vocabularies”,
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hoffman-rfcexamples/
6. The Statements of Work
- - http://www.nostrum.com/~rjsparks/rfced/