Subject: [Tools-discuss] DOWNREF warnings

From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:50:11 +0100

Hi,

With the stepped up focus from the IESG side on DOWNREF issues. It would 
be good if the ID-nits tools printed a warning if a document contained 
downrefs, at least to IETF RFCs. That way people would be aware and the 
chairs would hopefully remember to tell their ADs that.

Cheers

Magnus Westerlund

IETF Transport Area Director & TSVWG Chair
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From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:09:29 +0100

On Dec 14, 2006, at 16:50, Magnus Westerlund wrote:
> With the stepped up focus from the IESG side on DOWNREF issues. It  
> would be good if the ID-nits tools printed a warning if a document  
> contained downrefs, at least to IETF RFCs. That way people would be  
> aware and the chairs would hopefully remember to tell their ADs that.

It's hard to do without local or online access to the ID database.

I recently started to use Bill's tool at http://rtg.ietf.org/~fenner/ 
ietf/deps/index.cgi during my review procedure.

Lars

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From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:26:33 +0100

> It's hard to do without local or online access to the ID database.

But this is true for both the online version and the pre-processed 
available at tools.ietf.org.

> 
> I recently started to use Bill's tool at 
> http://rtg.ietf.org/~fenner/ietf/deps/index.cgi during my review procedure.

Yes, and maybe we should push this a bit harder on the WG chairs. I 
don't think most chairs know about this at all.

cheers

Magnus Westerlund

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 19:17:12 +0100

Hi Magnus,

> available at tools.ietf.org.

I've considered adding downref support to idnits, but have not done it
so far exactly because of this reason.  Currently it is the same version
of idnits which is downloadable as a standalone tool, and running behind
the web-service.  Adding downref checking to the web service might make
sense, but adding it to the standalone tool seems more problematic.
Providing a switch which causes idnits to go out and fetch the needed
up-to-date information from the net might be one way to go.  This could
be supplemented with an embedded downref database which idnits refused
to use if it was too old, maybe.

> don't think most chairs know about this at all.

Right.

	Henrik

---

From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 19:24:20 +0100

Henrik Levkowetz skrev:
> * PGP Signed by an unknown key: 12/14/2006 at 07:17:12 PM
> Hi Magnus,
> 

Thanks Henrik,

you can consider it. I think it would be a useful addition.

Cheers

Magnus Westerlund

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 20:06:30 +0100

Hi,

Ok, so now I've looked a bit at incorporating downref checks in idnits,
and I have some questions regarding exactly what's wanted.

* If the draft contains the pattern /^Intended [Ss]tatus: (.+)  / on
  the first page, I can trigger the downref check.  But what if there
  is no intended status indicated?  Do I assume standards track, and
  check downrefs, or do I assume informational/experimental, and skip
  the check?

* Doing downref checks against existing RFCs is not so hard, and embedding
  a snapshot of the status information of current RFCs would add about
  32k (~50%) to the size of the script, if no serious compression was done;
  with a little bit of extra effort I could get that down to ~5k (only
  using one byte per RFC for the current 4000+ RFCs).

  However, if downref checks against other drafts and their intended
  status is required, the size of an embedded snapshot would be
  substantially larger; even if I only included active drafts, it would
  be on the order of ~120k, and would of course become out-dated much
  faster than an RFC snapshot.

  So what's important here?  What would be useful, and what would be too
  much of a half-measure to be worth the effort?

  (If this is worth doing, I still expect to add the option of updating
  the snapshot when one is connected; but I'd like to continue the ability
  to do something sensible without having to be online, when running the
  script locally.)

	Henrik

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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:50:46 +0200 (EET)

>  check downrefs, or do I assume informational/experimental, and skip

Remember that downref to a draft is also common..

I wonder if it would be possible to use Bill's dep-checking tool here 
(I don't know if it implements all of these checks).

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 23:00:27 -0800

> Remember that downref to a draft is also common..

as long as it is non-normative, I don't see an issue with that.

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 09:10:33 +0100

On Dec 16, 2006, at 7:50, Pekka Savola wrote:
> I wonder if it would be possible to use Bill's dep-checking tool  
> here (I don't know if it implements all of these checks).

My local review script parses through Bill's page for a given  
document if online, and skips the downref check otherwise. Might work  
for idnits, too.

Lars

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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 10:25:00 +0200 (EET)

> as long as it is non-normative, I don't see an issue with that.

True but for normative ones you need to figure out the intended status 
(and current status ie. how far it is in the process) of the draft..

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 10:58:00 +0100

Hi Pekka,

> Remember that downref to a draft is also common..

Yes, but that's a comment on the second question I asked, not on this
one :-)

> (I don't know if it implements all of these checks).

If you're online, yes, but not when you're running idnits standalone
and don't have internet access, which would be the main reason to maybe
integrate this directly into idnits.  For the web-service, one of the ways
to provide this information is of course to query Bill's page.

	Henrik

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 11:47:52 +0100

Gentlemen,

> (and current status ie. how far it is in the process) of the draft..

This is all well and good, but the two questions I originally posed, on
which I need guidance, still remains just as un-answered to me.  I have
done some preliminary groundwork, but don't know how to take this forward
until I get responses to those particular questions ,;-)

Regards,

	Henrik

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From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:04:31 +0100

Henrik Levkowetz wrote:

> This is all well and good, but the two questions I originally posed,
> on which I need guidance, still remains just as un-answered to me.

(1) Without "intended status" assume "informational" and skip the new
    "downref" test.
(2) For references to I-Ds skip the downref test, note it as "missing
    normative reference" warning.

Frank

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From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 14:57:36 +0100

>   using one byte per RFC for the current 4000+ RFCs).

It's important to minimize false positives and negatives. This will  
be hard to do without online access to the tracker database, which  
has the status of both RFCs and IDs.

In other words, I don't think a partial offline check would be very  
useful, because document shepherds would then still need perform some  
other check when doing the PROTO writeup.

Personally, I think it would be fine if the tool would yell loudly  
that it couldn't check for downrefs when run without an Internet  
connection.

Lars

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:08:33 +0100

Hi Lars,

> that it couldn't check for downrefs when run without an Internet  

Ok. So that sounds as if you're also saying that checking only against
RFCs isn't worth that much; if normatively referenced drafts can't be
checked one might just as well not bother?

The question then remains whether it's worthwhile to add this check
to the command-line version of idnits, or only to the web version?

	Henrik

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From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:44:49 +0100

> checked one might just as well not bother?

Well, it's worth something, but a PROTO shepherd would also need to  
check whether there are IDs cited that will become downrefs when they  
are published. So while it is worth something, it's not the complete  
downref check that PROTO requires.

> to the command-line version of idnits, or only to the web version?

Since I only use the command line version, that's where I'd want it  
personally :-)

Lars

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 09:52:49 -0800

> Since I only use the command line version, that's where I'd want it  

I personally use both - the command line version for normal uses, and  
the html version when I'm mailing in a document to ensure I have the  
very latest version. The latter has the advantage of knowing for sure  
that it is on-line etc. For my money, the simplest thing that Henrik  
can do is put it in the online version as an additional check, and  
people using that can do as they will with the output - if they don't  
want it in a given case, ignore it.

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 09:49:53 +0100

>     normative reference" warning.

Just to be contrarian, wouldn't it be an alternative use of
this effort to design a proper meta-data descriptor for a draft,
where intended status and reference relationships could be described
unambiguously?

Guessing what ASCII text means is never going to be perfect.

(In a sense, this would be a single-ended version of what
draft-otis-newtrk-rfc-set talked about.)

    Brian

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From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:41:34 +0100

Henrik Levkowetz skrev:
> * PGP Signed by an unknown key: 12/15/2006 at 08:06:30 PM
> Hi,
> 

assume standards track and write a waring about your assumption.

>   much of a half-measure to be worth the effort?

To me it is the RFCs that are important. It is more easy to remember the 
obvious draft reference in the normative list as they will block 
publication. It is much more easy to miss that one is actually 
performing a downref.

>   to do something sensible without having to be online, when running the

Thus including the RFC database info seems viable and would provide most 
of the functionality I consider important.

In regards to checking drafts as downrefs. Even with the tracker state 
it is not obvious that you will get much more information out of this 
then a warning saying: There is normative references to a draft. I think 
the only state in the draft tracker that really can be accepted to not 
raise a warning is the drafts that are in the RFC editor queue.

Cheers

Magnus Westerlund

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 13:52:47 +0100

Hi Brian,

> where intended status and reference relationships could be described

Sounds like an extension of my metadata project (work in progress!)
with the addition of a formal way to feed correct data into the
system.  Currently there is meta-information available for (hopefully)
all drafts, updated from ~10 different sources, including secretariat
sources, RFC editor, and extraction from the drafts.  Taking the document
you mention below as an example, you have this:
  http://tools.ietf.org/draft/draft-otis-newtrk-rfc-set/state

When we have the document submission tool in place, we can also start
thinking about asking for things like intended status up front, which
makes it easier to get correct and reliable information into the system,
and with xml source available it would be fairly easy to extract the
references and add them, and the resulting downref status, to the
meta-data.

> Guessing what ASCII text means is never going to be perfect.

Agreed :-}

> draft-otis-newtrk-rfc-set talked about.)

Right, I guess so.

	Henrik

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:28:21 +0100

>   http://tools.ietf.org/draft/draft-otis-newtrk-rfc-set/state

Got it. Metadata about a document about document metatdata :-)

> references and add them, and the resulting downref status, to the

Indeed. If everyone used xml2rfc this could be much better integrated,
of course.

    Brian