Subject: [Tools-discuss] handling of Working group label in ietf.org hosted output

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2019 13:29:49 -0500

Due to cargo-culting and copy and paste I have:

   wg: anima Working Group

in my markdown, which results in:
   <workgroup>anima Working Group</workgroup>

I happened to notice in the HTML output hosted on ietf.org/id/ how prominent
this is, and how easily it could be used to confuse people into thinking my
document had been adopted, when it was still an individual submission.

Clearly, I should conscientiously put something else there.
1) what should I put?  I think that "independant submission" would make
sense.

2) I think that the result should be driven by the datatracker.

My suggestion is that the xml2rfc converter have an command line override for
this element, such that the actual value for Internet-drafts can be driven by
the datatracker rather than the author.

This is not a new problem, btw.  I think that it was just wasn't so obvious
in tools.ietf.org, because the included header in the htmlized output made
that WG label a lot less obvious.

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

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From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2019 20:20:03 +0100

> 1) what should I put?  I think that "independant submission" would make

RFC 7991 says:

   This element is used to specify the Working Group (IETF) or Research
   Group (IRTF) from which the document originates, if any.  The
   recommended format is the official name of the Working Group (with
   some capitalization).

Clearly, your submission to ANIMA did not originate from the WG, so just writing “anima” is not right, as you say.  People still like to indicate the target for an individual submission, so “Submission to the anima working group” would work for me.  (I too often see documents where I have no idea where they are discussed.  Adding an editor’s note for that is a good way to provide that information, but a workgroup element sounds like a minimal way to cover this.)

The confusion is similar to the “intended status” confusion: When I’m writing a submission for the standards track, it is not yet on the standards track, but I’ll still indicate that I want it to be.  So I’m likely write

wg: LWIG Working Group

in my submission to the LWIG WG about 7228bis, even before it is adopted.

BTW, 

   Formatting software can append the words "Working Group" or "Research
   Group", depending on the "submissionType" property of the <rfc>
   element (Section 2.45.12).

I don’t think that this happens, so you seem to get free reign to influence what goes into the first line of the I-D.  Maybe xml2rfc should instead put in “Intended working group:” as it does for “Intended status:”?

Grüße, Carsten

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 00:17:03 +0100

> 1) what should I put?  I think that "independant submission" would make

Just put nothing there.

> that WG label a lot less obvious.

The formatter at least could emit a warning if the draft name doesn't
match "draft-ietf-*".

Best regards, Julian

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 00:18:09 +0100

On 09.12.2019 20:20, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> ...

rfc2629.xslt appends "Working Group" when the specified string does not
already contain it.

Best regards, Julian

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 10:07:39 +0100

Hi Carsten,

On 2019-12-09 20:20, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> I don’t think that this happens, so you seem to get free reign to
> influence what goes into the first line of the I-D.  Maybe xml2rfc
> should instead put in “Intended working group:” as it does for
> “Intended status:”?

That seems reasonable, but requires submissionType to be set correctly.

If you'll be kind enough to enter a ticket, I'll fix that when there is
time and there aren't RPC tickets that needs handling.

Regards,

	Henrik

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:09:20 +0100

>> should instead put in “Intended working group:” as it does for

Potentially. There really should be an equivalent of the RFC Style Guide
that applies to Internet Drafts which would tell us what the right thing is.

My understanding of the current "best practice" is:

- work group name if it's a WG submission
- "Network Working Group" otherwise (yes, history...)

AFAIK, this is what tools have produced until now.

> That seems reasonable, but requires submissionType to be set correctly.

No. submissionType is about document streams (so it's really only
relevant once something is published as RFC), not type of I-D
submissions. See
<https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc7991.html#element.rfc.attribute.submissionType>.

We *could* extend it for other uses, but let's do this carefully.

Best regards, Julian

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:23:00 -0500

> Just put nothing there.

I agree that this would be better.

    > The formatter at least could emit a warning if the draft name doesn't

That feels too specific to our current process.
I'd prefer being able to override elements from the command line, as then the
datatracker could push some text in that made sense.  Would we want to put
the document state in and even reformat Internet-Drafts?
IDs are not RFCs, we can revise/reformat them.  We have ETAG and Expires to
help us :-)