Network Working Group H. Flanagan Internet-Draft RFC Editor Intended status: Informational January 12, 2015 Expires: July 16, 2015 Requirements for Plain-Text RFCs draft-flanagan-plaintext-05 Abstract In 2013, after a great deal of community discussion, the decision was made to shift from the plain-text, ASCII-only canonical format for RFCs to XML as the canonical format. The high-level requirements that informed this change were defined in RFC6949, "RFC Series Format Requirements and Future Development." Plain text is still an important format for many in the IETF community, and will still be one of the publication formats rendered from the XML. This draft documents the rendering requirements for the plain-text RFC publication format. These requirements do not apply to plain-text RFCs published before the format cut over. 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 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 July 16, 2015. Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Plain-Text RFCs January 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. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Character Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Figures and Artwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. General Page Format Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4.1. Headers and Footers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4.2. Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.3. Line Width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.4. Line Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.5. Hyphenation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. Elements from the xml2rfc v3 vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 9. Change Log for the Draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 9.1. -04 to -05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 9.2. -03 to -04 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 9.3. -02 to -03 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 9.4. -01 to -02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1. Introduction In 2013, after a great deal of community discussion, the decision was made to shift from the plain-text, ASCII-only canonical format for RFCs to XML as the canonical format [XML-ANNOUNCE]. The high-level requirements that informed this change were defined in [RFC6949], "RFC Series Format Requirements and Future Development." Plain text is still an important format for many in the IETF community, and will Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Plain-Text RFCs January 2015 still be one of the publication formats rendered from the XML. This draft documents the rendering requirements for the plain-text RFC publication format. These requirements do not apply to plain-text RFCs published before the format transition. 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] In other words, plain-text files cannot include embedded character formatting or style information. The actual character encoding for a plain-text file, however, is not limited to ASCII or any other character encoding system. 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 how pagination will be handled, are documented in this memo. For more details on general style, see "The RFC Style Guide." [RFC7322] The following assumptions drive the changes in the plain-text output for RFCs: o The existing tools used by the RFC Editor and many members of the author community to create the text file are complicated to change and support; manual manipulation is often required for the final output. In particular, handling page breaks and associated widows and orphans for paginated output is tricky [WIDOWS]. o Additional publication formats--for example: PDF, HTML-- will be available that will offer features such as markup, pretty printing, etc. o There is an extensive tool chain in existence among the community to work with plain-text documents. Similar functionality may be possible with other publication formats, but the workflow that uses the existing tool chain should be supported as much as is considered practical. Where practical, the original guidance for the structure of a plain- text RFC has been kept, such as with line lengths, lines per page, etc. [INS2AUTH] Note that this document provides guidance for plain-text RFCs; Internet-Drafts are out of scope. Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Plain-Text RFCs January 2015 2. Character Encoding Plain-text files for RFCs will use the UTF-8 [RFC3629] character encoding. That said, the use of non-ASCII characters will be only allowed in a limited and controlled fashion. The details regarding the guidance for how to include non-ASCII characters is under development and documented in "The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs" [I-D.flanagan-nonascii]. Please view the PDF version of that draft. The plain-text 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 relevant figure in 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. If there is conflicting information between the publication formats, please review the XML and PDF files to resolve the conflict. 4. General Page Format Layout One plain-text output will be created during the publication process with basic pagination that includes a form feed instruction every 58 lines at most, including blank lines. Instructions or a script will be made available by and for the community to strip out pagination as per individual preference. 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". Running headers and footers will no longer be added. Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Plain-Text RFCs January 2015 4.2. Table of Contents In order to retain similar content wherever possible between the various publication formats, the Table of Contents will list section and subsection numbers and titles, but will not include page numbers. 4.3. Line Width Each line must be limited to 72 characters followed by the character sequence that denotes an end-of-line (EOL). The EOL sequence used by the RFC Editor will be the two-character sequence CR LF (Carriage Return followed by Line Feed). This limit includes any left-side indentation. Note that the EOL used by the RFC Editor may change with different transports and as displayed in different display software. 4.4. Line Spacing Use single-spaced text within a paragraph, and one blank line between paragraphs. 4.5. Hyphenation Hyphenated words (e.g., "Internet-Draft"), should not be split across successive lines. 5. Elements from the xml2rfc v3 vocabulary The plain-text does not attempt to render all metadata from the XML. URIs that occur in targets may be placed into parenthetical expressions or reference entries. [I-D.hoffman-xml2rfc]. Since plain-text cannot include any rich-text-style formatting, such as bold or italic fonts, tags such as and will not be rendered in any way in the plain-text draft. 6. 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. Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Plain-Text RFCs January 2015 7. IANA Considerations This memo includes no requests to IANA. 8. Security Considerations TBD. 9. Change Log for the Draft 9.1. -04 to -05 Abstract and Introduction: Revised for better readability; clarified the definition and implications of the term "plain-text" General Page Format Layout: Added explicit EOL detail and added some clarification regarding pagination Elements from the xml2rfc v3 vocabulary: section added 9.2. -03 to -04 Change Log for the Draft: forgot to complete the change log between the various revisions of the draft 9.3. -02 to -03 Abstract: expanded Introduction: adjusted language of assumptions Figures and Artwork: adjusted to indicate where to go in case information for the images conflicts between different formats General Page Layout: switched back to producing one basic paginated format, with an expectation of instructions and/or a script to create local, unpaginated copies for individual use. 9.4. -01 to -02 Introduction: added pointer to original page layout information Character encoding: clarified language around encoding and use of BOMs General Page Format Layout: removed increased line width requirement; added sections on Line Width, Line Spacing, and Hyphenation (pulled from 2223-bis Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Plain-Text RFCs January 2015 10. References 10.1. Normative References [I-D.flanagan-nonascii] Flanagan, H., "The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs", draft-flanagan-nonascii-03 (work in progress), July 2014. [I-D.hoffman-xml2rfc] Hoffman, P., "The 'XML2RFC' version 3 Vocabulary", draft- hoffman-xml2rfc-15 (work in progress), January 2015. [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. [RFC7322] Flanagan, H. and S. Ginoza, "RFC Style Guide", RFC 7322, September 2014. 10.2. Informative References [INS2AUTH] RFC Editor, "Instructions to Request for Comments (RFC) Authors", August 2004, . [UNICODE-GLOSSARY] The Unicode Consortium, "Glossary of Unicode Terms", 2014, . [WIDOWS] Wikipedia, ""Widows and orphans"", October 2014, . [XML-ANNOUNCE] Flanagan, H., ""Subject: Direction of the RFC Format Development effort", message to the rfc-interest@rfc- editor.org mailing list", May 2013, . Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Plain-Text RFCs January 2015 Author's Address Heather Flanagan RFC Editor Email: rse@rfc-editor.org Flanagan Expires July 16, 2015 [Page 8]