Subject: [Tools-discuss] Idnits-1.84 feedback

From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 14:01:34 -0500

I just ran a document through the idnits checker.  It produced some
unexpected results:

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-sieve-3431bis-04.txt

Output:

idnits 1.84 

tmp/draft-ietf-sieve-3431bis-04.txt:

  Checking nits according to http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html:
    
    Checking conformance with RFC 3978/3979 boilerplate...

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3978 Section 5.4 Copyright Line --
    however, there's a paragraph with a matching beginning. Boilerplate
error?

    RFC 3978 Section 5.4 paragraph 1 text:
    "Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006)."
  
    ... text found in draft:
    "Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).  This document is subject
............................................^
    to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
    except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.")

  * The document seems to lack an RFC 3978 Section 5.4 Reference to BCP 78. 

    RFC 3978 Section 5.4 paragraph 2 text:
    "This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
    contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
    retain all their rights."

  Checking nits according to http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt:
    Nothing found here (but these checks do not cover all of
    1id-guidelines.txt yet).

  Miscellaneous warnings:
    None.

It looks like the tool is checking for 2006 copyright dates now that we're
in 2006, but that will be a problem for documents that were written in 2005.

The BCP 78 error is interesting.  The text is in the document, but it exists
after the copyright notice.  Did the tool skip it because of the copyright
date error?

-Scott-

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 14:40:02 +0100

Hi Scott,

> I just ran a document through the idnits checker.  It produced some

[snip]

> in 2006, but that will be a problem for documents that were written in 2005.

You're right, it's checking for copyright dates matching the current year.
I think this is strictly speaking correct, but wouldn't mind adding a grace
period just after each new year.  (Of course, that conflicts with the
current policy with respect to boilerplate, which is to require letter-
perfect adherence, with a male author not even being permitted to change
"he or she" to "he"; something I personally think is silly, but nevermind.)

Any suggestion as to the length of such a grace period?

Or should I instead add a switch to make it possible to say something like

  $ idnits --year 2005 draft-ietf-sieve-3431bis-04.txt

and have idnits accept the given year instead of the current year in copyright
text, maybe?

> after the copyright notice.  Did the tool skip it because of the copyright

Yes.  If the text had been in a separate paragraph, it would have been
recognized, but I do some extra work to also recognize multiple boiler-plate
paragraphs which has been contracted into one.  This is done by concatenating
potential boilerplate paragraphs and matching the aggregate against the
current paragraph, and thus fails when one of the parts in the input text
fails to match.

A strategy of instead trying to split paragraphs in the draft input into
potential individual boilerplate paragraphs would not fail in this way, but
would also (I think) be quite a bit more complex.  I may consider re-writing
to do in the future, but won't do it now.

	Henrik

---

From: "Scott Hollenbeck" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 08:52:43 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Henrik Levkowetz [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 8:40 AM
> To: Scott Hollenbeck
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Tools-discuss] Idnits-1.84 feedback
> 
> Hi Scott,
> 

A switch sounds like a good idea.  Maybe a text box on the web form, too?
Of course, it's not really a big deal if the user recognizes what's going
on.  It's probably OK to just leave things as-is.

I know that the current year needs to be checked when submitting a new
document, but my use case is a little bit different: I also check documents
that are being submitted to the IESG for evaluation.  They might have been
written in the prior year.

> to do in the future, but won't do it now.

Again, it's no big deal.  I just wanted to be sure that I was interpreting
the output correctly.

Thanks,
-Scott-

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 16:05:44 +0200

Get the date from the draft and use that to
select the policy that should have been applied
at that time...

--Jari

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 15:18:21 +0100

> select the policy that should have been applied

That would work for Scott's use case, but not for submit-time checking.

I've added a switch, now running regression testing of v1.85 .

	Henrik

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 16:05:22 +0100

idnits v1.85 is now available, adding a --year switch to accept a different
year than the current year in copyright boilerplate.  A corresponding field
has also been added to the webservice at http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits .

Best,

	Henrik

on 2006-01-04 15:18 Henrik Levkowetz said the following:
[...]