Subject: Re: [xml2rfc] BCP references

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:52:44 -0400

--On Thursday, June 28, 2012 12:00 -0400 Alice Russo
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> For creating a reference element for a subseries identifier
> that contains more than one RFC (for example: BCP 9 or STD 62)
> -- from the perspective of the RFC Production Center, this
> text is recommended:
> 
>   [BCP9]     Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process --
> Revision              3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
> 
>              Dusseault, L. and R. Sparks, "Guidance on
> Interoperation              and Implementation Reports for
> Advancement to Draft              Standard", BCP 9, RFC 5657,
> September 2009.
> 
>              Housley, R., Crocker, D., and E. Burger,
> "Reducing the              Standards Track to Two Maturity
> Levels", BCP 9, RFC 6410,              October 2011.
> 
> In XML, as a work-around, the annotation element can be used
> to create that entry (the text can be copied & pasted from the
> RFC bibliographic entries on
> ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc-ref.txt):
>...

Alice,

Yes, but this is a horrible kludge that defeats most of the
value of generic markup within references as well as forcing
copying from the library rather than incorporating references by
inclusion.  The latter is both error-prone and, unless
everything copies in the same way, prone to inconsistency.

FWIW, one of the originators of xml2rfc once suggested using
<seriesInfo> elements for these sorts of compound references,
not >annotation>.  Also a horrible kludge, not necessarily a
worse one.

While horrible kludges are appropriate until a solution can be
deployed, the solution has been known, and suggested multiple
times, for years.  It is to allow nested references, e.g., to
permit 

  <reference anchor="BCP9">
    &rfc2026;
    &rfc5657;
    &rfc6410;
  </reference>

(or, of course, the expanded versions of the named entities).

With some careful attention to formatting or an additional
attribute like 
   <reference anchor="XX" referenceType="bookChapter">
, the above construction would also deal with the problem of 

   Bloggs, J., "Spring flowers", ... in Smith, A., Flowers of
Southern Antarctica, ...

As I said when the Reference committee report appeared, I think
it is important that the RFC Editor do, or sponsor, an analysis
of the use cases of compound references and then help those who
are in charge of tools like xml2rfc to get the right
constructions into their definitions and code.  Fortunately,
there are not a huge number of such cases.  As far as I know,
chapters in books, articles in journals, various sorts of
compendia (or which BCP and STD references are examples), and a
referenced item that is available via multiple sources (reprints
as well as online and offline) just about covers the space.

   best,
     john