RFC v3 Prep Tool Description
draft-hoffman-rfcv3-preptool-01

Network Working Group                                         P. Hoffman
Internet-Draft                                            VPN Consortium
Intended status: Informational                             J. Hildebrand
Expires: December 3, 2015                                          Cisco
                                                           June 01, 2015

                      RFC v3 Prep Tool Description
                    draft-hoffman-rfcv3-preptool-01

Abstract

   This short document describes some aspects of the "prep tool" that is
   expected to be created when the new RFC v3 specification is deployed.
   This draft is just a way to keep track of the ideas; it is not
   (currently) expected to be published as an RFC.

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
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   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 3, 2015.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2015 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
   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.

Hoffman & Hildebrand    Expires December 3, 2015                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft        RFC v3 Prep Tool Description             June 2015

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  v3 Prep Tool Usage Scenarios  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Internet-Draft Submission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Canonical RFC Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   5.  What the v3 Prep Tool Does  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   9.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   As a part of the new HTML format work, the RFC Editor has decided
   that the XML2RFCv3 vocabulary [I-D.hoffman-xml2rfc] will be
   canonical, in the sense that it is the data that is blessed by the
   process as the actual RFC.  See [RFC6949] for more detail on this.

   Most people will read other formats, such as HTML, PDF, ASCII text,
   or other formats of the future, however.  In order to ensure each of
   these format is as similar as possible to one another as well as the
   canonical XML, there is a desire for the translation from XML into
   the other formats will be straightforward syntactic translation.  To
   make that happen, a good amount of data will need to be in the XML
   format that is notthere today.  That data will be added by a program
   called the "prep tool", which will often run as a part of the xml2rfc
   process.

   This draft specifies the steps that the prep tool will have to take.
   As changes to [I-D.hoffman-xml2rfc] are made, this document will be
   updated.

2.  v3 Prep Tool Usage Scenarios

   The prep tool will have (at least) two settings:

   o  Internet-Draft preparation

   o  Canonical RFC preparation

   There are only a few difference between these two settings.  For
   example, the boilerplate output will be different, as will the date
   output on the front page.

   Note that this only describes what the IETF-sponsored prep tool does.
   Others might create their own work-alike prep tools for their own

Hoffman & Hildebrand    Expires December 3, 2015                [Page 2]
Internet-Draft        RFC v3 Prep Tool Description             June 2015

   formatting needs.  However, an output format developer does not not
   need to change the prep tool in order to create their own formatter:
   they only need to be able to consume prepared text.

   This tool is described as if it is a separate tool so that we can
   reason about its architectural properties.  In actual implementation,
   it might be a part of a larger suite of functionality.

3.  Internet-Draft Submission

   When the IETF draft submission tool accepts v3 XML as an input
   format, the submission tool runs the submitted file through the prep
   tool.  If the tool finds no errors, it keeps two XML files: the
   submitted file and the prepped file.

   The prepped file provides a record of what a submitter was attesting
   to at the time of submission.  It represents a self-contained record
   of what any external references resolved to at the time of
   submission.

   The prepped file is used by the IETF formatters to create outputs
   such as HTML, PDF, and text (or the tools act in a way
   indistinguishable from this).  The message sent out by the draft
   submission tool includes a link to the original XML as well as the
   other outputs, including the prepped XML.

   The prepped XML can be used by tools not yet developed to output new
   formats that have as similar output as possible to the current IETF
   formatters.  For example, if the IETF creates a .mobi output renderer
   later, it can run that renderer on all of the prepped XML that has
   been saved, ensuring that the content of included external references
   and all of the part numbers and boilerplate will be the same as what
   was produced by the previous IETF formatters at the time the document
   was first uploaded.

4.  Canonical RFC Preparation

   During AUTH48, the RPC will run the prep tool in canonical RFC
   preparation mode and make the results available to the authors so
   they can see what the final output might look like.  When the
   document is done with AUTH48 review, the RPC runs the prep tool in
   canonical RFC preparation mode one last time, locks down the
   canonicalized XML, runs the formatters for the non-canonical output,
   and publishes all of those.  It is probably a good idea for the RPC
   to keep a copy of the input XML file from the various steps of the
   RFC production process.

Hoffman & Hildebrand    Expires December 3, 2015                [Page 3]
Internet-Draft        RFC v3 Prep Tool Description             June 2015

   Similarly to I-D's, the prepped XML can be used later to re-render
   the output formats, or to generate new formats.

5.  What the v3 Prep Tool Does

   The steps listed here are in order of processing.  In all cases where
   the prep tool would "add" an attribute or element, if that attribute
   or element already exists, the prep tool will check that the
   attribute or element is correct.  If the value is incorrect, the prep
   tool will warn with the old and new values, then replace the
   incorrect value with the new value.

   1.   Process all <x:include> elements.  Note: <x:include>d XML may
        include more <x:include>s (with relative URLs rooted at the
        xml:base), so set a limit on the depth of recursion.

   2.   If in RFC production mode, remove comments.

   3.   Add the boilerplate text with current values.  However, if
        different boilerplate text already exists in the input, produce
        a scary warning that says that other tools, specifically the
        draft submission tool, will treat that condition as an error.

   4.   Fill in the "prepTime" attribute of <rfc> with the current
        datetime.

   5.   If in I-D mode, fill in "expiresDate" attribute of <rfc>.

   6.   Fill in any default values for attributes on elements, except
        "keepWithNext" and "keepWithPrevious" of <t>, and "toc" of
        <section>.

   7.   If the <workgroup> content doesn't end with "Group", issue a
        warning.

   8.   Add a "slugifiedName" attribute to each <name> element that does
        not contain a valid one (all values must be valid HTML id's, and
        all start with with "n-").

   9.   Add "pn" attributes for all parts.  Parts are:

        *  <section>: pn='s-1.4.2'

        *  except <abstract>, which gets pn='s-abstract'

        *  except <note>, which gets pn='s-note-[counter]'

        *  <table>: pn='t-3'

Hoffman & Hildebrand    Expires December 3, 2015                [Page 4]
Internet-Draft        RFC v3 Prep Tool Description             June 2015

        *  <figure>: pn='f-4'

        *  (<abstract>, <note>, <t>, <aside>, <blockquote>, <li>, <dt>,
           <artwork>, <sourcecode>, <references>):
           pn='p-[section]-[counter]'

   10.  Add a "start" attribute to every <ol> element containing a group
        that doesn't already have a start.

   11.  Sort the references, if "sortRefs" of <rfc> is true.

   12.  Resolve all <xref> elements.  Ensure that each target is valid.
        Invent text for each element that doesn't have it.  (More steps
        will be added here when the community has agreement on *ref.)

   1.  Process <artwork> elements.  If an element has type='svg', and if
       there is a "src" attribute, inline and remove the "src"
       attribute, and insert "xml:base" attribute; also check SVG schema
       against our TinySVG profile.  Otherwise, if the "src" attribute
       is not a "data:" URI, turn it into a "data:" URI and insert
       "xml:base" attribute.

   2.  Add a <link> child element to <rfc> for the DOI, if in RFC
       production mode.

   3.  Determine all the characters used in the document, and fill in
       "scripts" attribute for <rfc>.

   4.  Ensure that the output has the "version" attribute of <rfc>, and
       that it is set to "3".

   5.  Pretty-format the XML output.  (Note: tools like
       https://github.com/hildjj/dentin do an adequate job.)

   6.  Ensure that the result is in full compliance to v3 schema,
       without any deprecated elements or attributes, and give an error
       if any issues are found.

6.  IANA Considerations

   None.

7.  Security Considerations

   None.

Hoffman & Hildebrand    Expires December 3, 2015                [Page 5]
Internet-Draft        RFC v3 Prep Tool Description             June 2015

8.  Acknowledgements

   Many people contributed valuable ideas to this document.  Special
   thanks go to Robert Sparks for his in-depth review and contributions
   early in the development of this document.

9.  Informative References

   [I-D.hoffman-xml2rfc]
              Hoffman, P., "The 'XML2RFC' version 3 Vocabulary", draft-
              hoffman-xml2rfc-18 (work in progress), May 2015.

   [RFC6949]  Flanagan, H. and N. Brownlee, "RFC Series Format
              Requirements and Future Development", RFC 6949, May 2013.

Authors' Addresses

   Paul Hoffman
   VPN Consortium

   Email: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org

   Joe Hildebrand
   Cisco

   Email: jhildebr@cisco.com

Hoffman & Hildebrand    Expires December 3, 2015                [Page 6]