Subject: [Tools-discuss] datatracker links to other formats

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 09:41:15 -0400

The datatracker has links to other versions:
  Other versions:	plain text, xml, pdf, html

which links to (for instance):
http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-irtf-nmrg-an-gap-analysis-02.txt
http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-irtf-nmrg-an-gap-analysis-02.xml
http://tools.ietf.org/pdf/draft-irtf-nmrg-an-gap-analysis-02.pdf
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-nmrg-an-gap-analysis-02

The last link goes to the <pre> wrapped .txt version from tools.ietf.org,
which yes, has a link to the HTML formatted xml2rfc version on it.

I'm wondering if there is a reason, or simply history, why the "html"
version doesn't go to the HTML version directly?

I'm also wondering if there is a reason why the www.ietf.org URL
is used for plain/xml rather than the tools version.

I guess I think about all of this partly from the point of view
of web and browser caches, but also from the point of view that I'm still
irked that it's not all URNs, and that the closest copy is really on my local
disk...

I also wonder if there is some reason, given the presence of the "show me the
whole thing" cookie setting for the datatracker, why that doesn't result in
a 302 to the ?includes_text=1 URL.  The reason this matters is because I
tend to pass that URL to my tablet offline reader (getpocket), although I think
I'll be using the tools.ietf.org HTML copy in future.  (Sadly, pocket still
can't display cached .txt URLs properly.)

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:05:22 +0200

> which yes, has a link to the HTML formatted xml2rfc version on it.

It *might* be thexml2rfc formatted version.

> version doesn't go to the HTML version directly?

My guess is that the data tracker allows uploading HTML, but what that 
file contains is under the control of who did the upload, and might not 
have any relation to the actual txt. (which, thiking of it, is true for 
the xml as well).

The right fix would be to change the upload tool to treat the XML as 
first class, and to generate TXT and HTML from it.

> ...

Best regards, Julian