Subject: reminder for people working on -bis documents

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:22:13 +0200

I have seen a number of problems recently with bis documents
accidentally ignoring changes introduced by the RFC Editor to the
original RFC. In some cases this has gone unnoticed all the way until
IETF Last Call.

The problem is that authors start with THEIR version of the source code
for the document as opposed to the final one that was translated into
the RFC. There are a number of changes that may have been introduced
after the authors passed the document on to the final IESG approval: 1)
RFC Editor's editorial changes and language improvements, 2) reference
updates, 3) IESG's RFC Editor notes that instruct the RFC Editor to make
a particular change to fix a small issue that led to a Discuss, and 4)
actual AUTH48 changes due to some bug discovered after approval.

Depending on the nature of the edits, missing these can be a nuisance or
a serious problem. It also makes comparison to the previous RFC
difficult. Many of us in the final review stage perform such
comparisons, as do implementors when they decide to upgrade to a newer
specification.

Given the above, I would like to remind all authors of bis documents to
pay attention to this issue. If the original RFC was published January
2007 or later and the document was prepared in XML, the RFC Editor
likely has XML source code for it that includes even AUTH48 changes. For
other documents, the RFC Editor has only NROFF source. These are
available by sending mail to [email-masked].

As an example, here's what I am planning to do for a bis RFC that I was
the editor of. The RFC is too old to have XML source for the final
version, so I decided to use my own source:

1. Compile old source with new copyright settings etc.
2. Use rfcdiff to compare with the original RFC
3. Change my source until the result modulo copyright etc matches the
original RFC
4. Publish a -00 with exactly the same contents as the original RFC
5. Publish a -01 with the desired changes

Jari

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From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:42:30 -0000

Good point Jari,

Can I also remind you to check in the RFC Errata pages to make sure you pick 
up any errors that have been flagged since RFC publication.

Adrian
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jari Arkko" <[email-masked]>
To: "IETF Discussion" <[email-masked]>; "Working Group Chairs" 
<[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 10:22 AM
Subject: reminder for people working on -bis documents

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:12:14 +0000

> up any errors that have been flagged since RFC publication.
Of course you mean the *relevant* errata - the RFC Erratas page is so 
full of junk these days that it is virtually unusable.

Stewart

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From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:29:42 +0200

Stewart, Adrian,

> Of course you mean the *relevant* errata

Right. Generally speaking, I would go over the reported erratas and see
which ones of them need to be  adopted. Some might even need WG discussion.

Jari