Subject: [Tools-discuss] Unpaginated drafts should be treated the same as paginated ones by the submission tool

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:49:18 -0800

Greetings again. I just turned in two drafts that were created without page breaks. The I-D Submission tool forces the drafts to go through manual processing. This seems terribly wrong, given that these drafts are perfectly legitimate. True, the tool can't estimate the page count: so what? That is not a good reason to penalize people who are trying to save paper for people who print out drafts.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:09:15 -0800

Paul Hoffman wrote:
> Greetings again. I just turned in two drafts that were created
> without
> page breaks. The I-D Submission tool forces the drafts to go through
> manual processing. This seems terribly wrong, given that these drafts
> are perfectly legitimate.

Why? Aren't page breaks expected, if not required?

> True, the tool can't estimate the page count:
> so what? That is not a good reason to penalize people who are trying to
> save paper for people who print out drafts.

There are many ways to save paper. Page breaks shouldn't affect these
(e.g., 2-up).

Joe

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:16:28 -0600

Joe,

A quick glance at http://www.ietf.org/ietf-ftp/1id-guidelines.txt didn't 
tell me that pagination is required.

I know that Paul isn't the only person who submits drafts without 
pagination.

Thanks,

Spencer

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:34:06 -0800

> tell me that pagination is required.

From that text:

   Internet-Drafts are generally in the format of an RFC, although they
   may be rough drafts when the first version is submitted.  This format
   is specified fully in "Instructions to RFC Authors" (see the RFC
   Editor's Web pages [1] and [I-D.rfc-editor-rfc2223bis]).  In brief,
   an Internet-Draft must be submitted in ASCII text, and should be
   limited to 72 characters per line and 58 lines per page, followed by
   a formfeed character.  Overstriking to achieve bolding or underlining
   is not acceptable.

I.e., the formfeed is required, and generally follows the format of an
RFC that indicates page numbers explictly.

Or does "pagination" mean something else?

Joe

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:29:00 -0800

>Or does "pagination" mean something else?

No, "should" means something else. Or are you saying that drafts that have no pagination are being completely rejected by the system, not just by the submission tool? If so, I suggest that you have not actually read through the Internet Drafts directory lately.

I hope that the Tools Team is not agreeing with Joe about what "should" means.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:53:10 -0600

On 1/29/10 16:16, Jan 29, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> Joe,
>
> A quick glance at http://www.ietf.org/ietf-ftp/1id-guidelines.txt 
> didn't tell me that pagination is required.

I think the passage you're looking for is in section 2:

>     [A]n Internet-Draft must be submitted in ASCII text, and should be
>     a formfeed character.

/a

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:58:16 -0600

Hi, Joe,

I was reading the first sentence as overarching:

   Internet-Drafts are generally in the format of an RFC, although they
   may be rough drafts when the first version is submitted.

I wouldn't mind pagination being required, whether we think that's already 
true or not, but I think Paul's point was that the draft was accepted when 
submitted manually, so it's not clear what value was being added by 
rejecting at autosubmission time...

Thanks,

Spencer

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From: "Roy T. Fielding" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:11:40 -0800

On Jan 29, 2010, at 3:58 PM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> I wouldn't mind pagination being required, whether we think that's already true or not, but I think Paul's point was that the draft was accepted when submitted manually, so it's not clear what value was being added by rejecting at autosubmission time...

FWIW, pagination has never been required of drafts.  Before xml2rfc,
I would never paginate my drafts because it makes a mess of diffs
(and is otherwise painfully stupid, but that's just my opinion).

....Roy

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:26:24 -0800

Paul Hoffman wrote:
> No, "should" means something else. Or are you saying that drafts that
> have no pagination are being completely rejected by the system, not
> just by the submission tool? If so, I suggest that you have not
> actually read through the Internet Drafts directory lately.
> 

I think that this all means that the autosubmission tool is either
rejecting something that the manual submission "should" have, or that
the autosubmission tool "should" be updated.

I'm guessing that all these "shoulds" (including "should" use formfeed)
would be interpreted the same way.

Joe

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:38:34 -0800

So, how do I turn in a formal bug report on this part of the I-D submission tool? 

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:28:30 -0800

> So, how do I turn in a formal bug report on this part of the I-D submission tool? 

From the web page:

Please send problem reports to [email-masked].

It's unclear that there's a "formal" process. From the tools page:

"Tools Team Prototype Tools are tools that are under development by the
Tools Team, and are not maintained by the Secretariat"

Joe