RFC Format Framework

The canonical format for the RFC Series has been plain-text, ASCII-encoded for several decades. After extensive community discussion and debate, the RFC Editor will be transitioning to XML as the canonical format using the XML2RFC version 3 vocabulary. Different publication formats will be rendered from that base document. These changes are intended to increase the usability of the RFC Series by offering documents that match the needs of a wider variety of stakeholders. With these changes, however, comes an increase in complexity for authors, consumers, and the publisher of RFCs. This document serves as the framework that describes the problems being solved and summarizes the many documents that capture the specific requirements for each aspect of the change in format.¶

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 25, 2016.¶

Copyright (c) 2016 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.¶

"RFC Series Format Requirements and Future Development" discussed the need for additional features within RFCs such as non-ASCII characters to respect author names, more advanced artwork than ASCII art, and documents that could display properly on a wide variety of devices [RFC6949]. Based on the discussions with the IETF community as well as other communities of interest, the RFC Series Editor decided to explore a change to the format of the Series [XML-ANNOUNCE]. This document serves as the framework that describes the problems being solved and summarizes the documents created to-date that capture the specific requirements for each aspect of the change in format.¶

Key changes to the publication of RFCs are highlighted, and a transition plan that will take the Series from a plain-text, ASCII-only format to the new formats is described on the rfc-interest mailing list [RFC-INTEREST].¶

This document is concerned with the production of RFCs, focusing on the published formats. It does not address any changes to the processes each stream uses to develop and review their submissions (specifically, how Internet-Drafts will be developed). While I-Ds have a similar set of issues and concerns, directly addressing those issues for I-Ds will be discussed within each document stream.¶

The details described in this document are expected to change based on experience gained in implementing the RFC Production Center's toolset. Revised documents will be published capturing those changes as the toolset is completed. Other implementers must not expect those changes to remain backwards-compatible with the details described this document.¶

There are nearly three billion people connected to the Internet, and individuals from 45 countries or more regularly attending IETF meetings over the last five years [ISTATS]. The Internet is now global, and while the world has changed from when the first RFCs were published, the Series remains critical to defining protocols, standards, best practices, and more for this global network that continues to grow. In order to make RFCs easily viewable to the largest number of people possible, across a wide array of devices, and to respect the diversity of authors and reference materials while still recognizing the archival aspects of the Series, it is time to update the tightly prescribed format of the RFC Series.¶

All changes to the format of the RFC Series must consider the requirements of a wide set of communities, over an extended length of time. For example, existing authors and implementers, lawyers that argue Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), educators, managers, and policy-makers that need to know what to list in potential RFPs for their organizations, all have preferences and requirements for their specific needs. The immediate needs of today's communities must be balanced with the needs for long-term archival storage.¶

• ASCII: Coded Character Set - 7-bit American Standard Code for Information Interchange, ANSI X3.4-1986

• Canonical format: the authorized, recognized, accepted, and archived version of the document

• Metadata: information associated with a document so as to provide, for example, definitions of its structure, or of elements within the document such as its topic or author

• Publication format: display and distribution format as it may be read or printed after the publication process has completed

• Reflowable text: text that automatically wraps to the next line in a document as the user moves the margins of the text, either by resizing the window or changing the font size

• Revisable format: the format that will provide the information for conversion into a Publication format; it is used or created by the RFC Editor

• Submission format: the format submitted to the RFC Editor for editorial revision and publication

Requirements, use cases, concerns, and suggestions were collected from the communities of interest at every stage of the RFC format update project. Input was received through the rfc-interest mailing list, as well as in several face-to-face sessions at IETF meetings. Regular conversations were held with the IETF, IRTF, IAB, and IAOC chairs, and the Independent Stream Editor, to discuss high-level stream requirements. Updates regarding the status of the project were provided to the IETF community during the IETF Technical Plenary as well as Format BoFs or IAB sessions at IETF 84, IETF 85, IETF 88, IETF 89, and IETF 90 [IETF84] [IETF85] [IETF88] [IETF89] [IETF90].¶

The first document published, RFC 6949, provided the first solid documentation on what the requirements were for the Series and in effect was the output from the first year of discussion on the topic of RFC format. That RFC, as with all of the RFCs that informed the format update work, was published as an IAB stream document, thus following the process described in RFC 4845, "Process for Publication of IAB RFCs" [RFC4845].¶

After the high-level requirements were published, the RFC Series Editor (RSE) brought together an RFC Format Design Team to start working out the necessary details to develop the code needed to create new and changed formats. The design team discussed moving away from the existing xml2rfc vocabulary, but with such a strong existing support base within the community and no clear value with other XML vocabularies or schemas, the decision was made to work with the XML2RFC version 2 (xml2rfc v2) model and use it as the base for the new format world [RFC7749]. Part of this discussion included a decision to stop using an XML document type definition (DTD) in favor of a Regular Language for XML Next General (Relax NG) model using a defined vocabulary. While the bi-weekly calls for this team were limited to Design Team members, review of the decisions as documented in the drafts produced by this team were done publicly through requests for feedback on the rfc-interest mailing list. Several of the drafts produced by the Design Team, including the xml2rfc v2 and v3 drafts and the SVG profile drafts, were sent through an early GenART review before starting the process to be accepted as an IAB stream draft [GEN-ART] [I-D.iab-xml2rfc].¶

While the IETF community provided the majority of input on the process, additional outreach opportunities were sought to gain input from an even broader audience. Informal discussions were held with participants at several International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publisher events, and presentations made at technical conferences such as the TERENA Networking Conference 2014 and NORDUnet 2014 [TNC2014] [NDN2014].¶

In order to respond to concerns regarding responses to subpoenas and to understand the requirements for lawyers, advice was requested from the IETF Trust legal team regarding what format or formats would be considered reasonable when responding to a subpoena request for an RFC.¶

Given that several other standards development organizations (SDOs) do not offer plain-text documents, and in fact may offer more than one format for their standards, informal input was sought from them regarding their experience with supporting one or more non-plain-text formats for their standards.¶

Finally, the entire process was reviewed regularly with the RFC Series Oversight Committee and regular updates provided to the IAB and IESG [RSOC]. They have offered support and input throughout the process.¶

Where consensus was not reached during the process, the RSE made any necessary final decisions, as per the guidance in RFC 6635, "RFC Editor Model (Version 2)" [RFC6635].¶

At the highest level, the changes being made to the RFC Format involve breaking away from a pure-ASCII plain text and moving to canonical format that includes all the information required for rendering a document into a wide variety of publication formats. The RFC Editor will become responsible for more than just the plain-text file and the PDF-from-text format created at time of publication; they will be creating several different formats in order to meet the diverse requirements of the community.¶

The final XML file produced by the RFC Editor will be considered the canonical format for RFCs; it is the lowest common denominator that holds all the information intended for an RFC. PDF/A-3 will be the publication format offered in response to subpoenas for RFCs published through this new process, and will be developed with an eye towards long-term archival storage. HTML will be the focus of providing the most flexible set of features for an RFC, including JavaScript to provide pointers to errata and other metadata. Plain-text will continue to be offered in order to support existing tool chains where practicable and the individuals who prefer to read RFCs in this format.¶

This document has no actions for IANA.¶

Changing the format for RFCs involves modifying a great number of components to publication. Understanding those changes and the implications for the entire tool chain is critical so as to avoid unintended bugs that would allow unintended changes to text. Unintended changes to text could in turn corrupt a standard, practice or critical piece of information about a protocol.¶

With many thanks to the RFC Format Design Team for their efforts in making this transition successful: Nevil Brownlee (ISE), Tony Hansen, Joe Hildebrand, Paul Hoffman, Ted Lemon, Julian Reschke, Adam Roach, Alice Russo, Robert Sparks (Tools Team liaison), and Dave Thaler.¶

To be removed by RFC Editor¶