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draft-iab-rfc-plaintext
Network Working Group H. Flanagan
Internet-Draft RFC Editor
Intended status: Informational June 20, 2014
Expires: December 22, 2014
Requirements for Plain Text RFCs
draft-flanagan-plaintext-00
Abstract
This draft documents the change in requirements and layout for the
plain-text RFC publication format.
Editorial Note (To be removed by the RFC Editor)
Discussion of this draft takes place on the rfc-interest mailing list
(rfc-interest@rfc-editor.org), which has its home page at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/mailman/listinfo/rfc-interest.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on December 22, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
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include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Character Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Figures and Artwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Page Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.1. Headers and Footers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.2. Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1. Introduction
One of the requirements documented in RFC 6949 [RFC6949], "RFC Series
Format Requirements and Future Development," is the continued support
for a plain text publication format.
The Unicode Consortium defines 'plain text' as "Computer-encoded text
that consists only of a sequence of code points from a given
standard, with no other formatting or structural information. Plain
text interchange is commonly used between computer systems that do
not share higher-level protocols." [unicode-glossary]
While a plain text output for RFCs will continue to be required for
the foreseeable future, the details of what that means for RFCs in
terms of which character encoding may be used, what the page layout
will look like, how to handle figures and artwork, and so on, are
documented in this draft.
The following assumptions drive the changes in the plain text output
for RFCs:
o The existing tools to create the text file are extremely
sensitive; manual manipulation is required in the final output.
In particular, handling page breaks for text is tricky.
o Additional publication formats--for example: PDF, HTML-- will be
available that will offer features such as markup, pagination,
etc.
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2. Character Encoding
The character encoding for all plain text documents will be UTF-8
[RFC3629]. The file will include a byte order mark (BOM) to provide
text reader software with in-band information about the character
encoding scheme used.
3. Figures and Artwork
Authors may continue to include figures drawn with ASCII characters.
If the canonical format includes figures or artwork other than ASCII-
art, then the plain text output must include a pointer to the HTML
version of the RFC to allow readers to see the relevant artwork.
Authors who wish to include ASCII-art for the plain text file and SVG
art for the other outputs may do so, but they should be aware of the
potential for confusion to individuals reading the RFC with two
unique diagrams describing the same content.
ASCII art will have a character width limit of no more than 85
characters.
4. Page Layout
Pagination is no longer required. Line lengths for both text and
artwork, will increase to 85 characters.
4.1. Headers and Footers
The front matter on the front page (such as the RFC number and
category), and the back matter on the last page (the author's full
names and contact information) will continue with the structure
described in RFC 5741 [RFC5741], "RFC Streams, Headers, and
Boilerplates". Given the removal of the pagination requirement,
running headers and footers will no longer exist.
4.2. Table of Contents
Given the removal of the pagination requirement, the Table of
Contents will list section and subsection numbers and titles, but
will not include page numbers.
5. Acknowledgements
This draft owes a great deal of thanks to the efforts of the RFC
Format Design Team: Nevil Brownlee, Tony Hansen, Joe Hildebrand, Paul
Hoffman, Ted Lemon, Julian Reschke, Adam Roach, Alice Russo, Robert
Sparks, and David Thaler
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6. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no requests to IANA.
7. Security Considerations
TBD.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.
[RFC5741] Daigle, L., Kolkman, O., and IAB, "RFC Streams, Headers,
and Boilerplates", RFC 5741, December 2009.
[RFC6949] Flanagan, H. and N. Brownlee, "RFC Series Format
Requirements and Future Development", RFC 6949, May 2013.
8.2. Informative References
[unicode-glossary]
The Unicode Consortium, "Glossary of Unicode Terms", 2014,
<http://www.unicode.org/glossary/>.
Author's Address
Heather Flanagan
RFC Editor
Email: rse@rfc-editor.org
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