Subject: [xml2rfc] referencing an old ID as expired

From: Robert Moskowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 10:49:17 -0400

I want to reference an old ID for various reasons.  The ID is expired 
and no xml.  So I created my own ref section:

<reference anchor="draft.moskowitz-hip-arch-02">
<front>
     <title>Host Identity Payload</title>
     <author initials="R" surname="Moskowitz" fullname="Robert Moskowitz">
     <organization/>
     </author>
     <date month="February" day="22" year="2001"/>
     <abstract>
     <t>
     This memo describes the reasoning behind proposing a new namespace, 
the Host Identity, and a payload, between the Internetworking and 
Transport layers, the Host layer, to carry this identity.  Herein is 
presented the basics of the current namespaces, strengths and 
weaknesses, and how a new namespace will add completeness to them. This 
new namespace's roles in the protocols are defined.
     </t>
     </abstract>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" value="draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-02"/>
<format type="TXT" 
target="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-02.txt"/>
</reference>

And got:

    [draft.moskowitz-hip-arch-02]
               Moskowitz, R., "Host Identity Payload", Work in Progress,
               Internet-Draft, draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-02, 22 February
               2001,
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-02>.

How do I change this from "Work in Progress" to "Expired"?

thanks

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 17:12:25 +0200

> target="http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-02.txt"/>

There's no point in adding the <format> element. It doesn't do anything.

> How do I change this from "Work in Progress" to "Expired"?

The RFC Style Guide requires that internet drafts are cited as "work in
progress", so this is what the formatter inserts automatically.

If you want to avoid that, you can't use the seriesinfo name attribute
of "Internet-Draft". This

   <seriesInfo name="expired Internet-Draft"
value="draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-02"/>

might roughly do what you want.

(And if it does, you'll have to supply the URI in the reference's target
attribute manually)

Best regards, Julian

PS: if this document gets into AUTH48, you may have to back this out :-)-

PPS: and yes, this is bad. We had a whole committee discussing
references to internet drafts 10 years ago and couldn't fix that.

---

From: Robert Moskowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 12:31:14 -0400

Julian,

> might roughly do what you want.

Yes it did:

    [draft.moskowitz-hip-arch-02]
               Moskowitz, R., "Host Identity Payload", Expired Internet-
               Draft draft-moskowitz-hip-arch-02, 22 February 2001.

Thanks.

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 15:35:19 -0400

>> and no xml.  So I created my own ref section:

I don't see much point in highlighting the fact that it is expired in 
the reference. *Any* time you reference a draft, even if it is active at 
the time you publish your document then it can eventually become 
expired. In some sense it remains a work in progress after it expires, 
it simply isn't making very much progress.

And after a draft has expired you can still post a next version of it.

Seems to be a distinction without a difference.

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Robert Moskowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 16:05:45 -0400

On 5/5/20 3:35 PM, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
> the reference. *Any* time you reference a draft, even if it is active 
> at the time you publish your document then it can eventually become 

One draft had a feature which was later removed and never made it into 
the rfc.  I wanted to reference the last draft with that feature for 
discussion purposes.

The other draft is dead and not going to restart.  However, it also 
presented this feature and thus part of the feature discussion.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 May 2020 08:55:30 +1200

> the rfc.  I wanted to reference the last draft with that feature for 

That's fine, but doesn't change the rule that I-Ds are cited as "work
in progress", which is as old as the hills and has been re-asserted
several times by the RFC Editor.

I can't remember why, but I once needed to cite two different versions
of the same I-D; that required some contortions in the xml, but they were
certainly both listed as "work in progress".

Stay well,

    Brian

> _______________________________________________
> xml2rfc mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/xml2rfc
>

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 23:16:35 +0200

> several times by the RFC Editor.

The place that cites the reference will need to provide the information whether the referenced draft is considered by the authors of the current draft to be

* active [it might still be expired, because the update period increased to over 6 months, and it may expire while the current draft is sitting in the repo]
* abandoned (no successor)
* superseded (we try to capture this in the datatracker as “replaced”, but that is manual work, it also doesn’t quite cover all the ways of superseding a previous draft)

The bibliography entry itself is agnostic of this view (*).

“Work in Progress” is a bit like “Proposed Standard”: 
It means something very different in the IETF than outside in normal English.

> certainly both listed as "work in progress".

Yeah, that is a misfeature of the bibxml library.  Easily worked around with kramdown-rfc.

Grüße, Carsten

(*) Ceterum censeo, not about the reference but about the place it appears in: It would really be useful to have a third category of references in RFCs that identifies *why* something is referenced, beyond normative and informative: historical.  But that is yet another dimension.  Yes, I know that historical can be lumped under informative, but this structure has more meaning to it than being used by the RFC editor to quarantine an RFC in the queue while its normative references aren’t done yet.

---

From: Robert Moskowitz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 17:38:23 -0400

> * superseded (we try to capture this in the datatracker as “replaced”, but that is manual work, it also doesn’t quite cover all the ways of superseding a previous draft)

hmmm.  well one was abandoned; dropped by the wg but had ideas connected 
to this work in progress.  The other was superseded; work continued with 
this feature...

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 May 2020 10:34:44 +1200

BTW, the proposal in
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-carpenter-rfc-citation-recs-01
in 2011 was this:

   4.  A citation of an Internet-Draft should use the phrase "Working
       Draft" rather than "Work in Progress" whenever appropriate.
       (Stream-specific policies and practices might prohibit this
       practice within certain RFC document streams.)

but it was not accepted. The issue came up again in 2018:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-roach-id-cite-00
but no change was accepted.

Regards
   Brian