Subject: Re: [rfc-i] some thoughts about errata

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2017 11:22:11 +0100

On 2014-07-12 11:25, Julian Reschke wrote:
> Below are some thoughts about how the errata system could be made more
> useful; note that this isn't about the process but just about the
> information offered by the RFC Editor web site:
>
> 1) Each erratum should have a stable URI that can be used for citations.
>
> 2) For each RFC, there should be a machine-readable (*) HTTP resource
> (**) offering status information about the set of erratas present for
> that RFC. The minimal information about each erratum would be ID and/or
> URI, status, and the section number it applies to (when available).
> Extra points for date information and maybe a title.
>
> (*) Optimally both JSON and XML. The former is good for JS running in
> browsers, the latter fits better into document production toolchains
> starting with XML anyway.
>
> (**) That implies proper CORS settings so that browsers can actually get
> the information even when the origin of the document is different.
>
> Best regards, Julian

OK, this was 2.5 years ago. People apparently agreed (and asked for even 
more).

Heather, could you please provide some feedback?

Best regards, Julian
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From: "Paul Hoffman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2017 07:08:45 -0800

On 8 Feb 2017, at 2:22, Julian Reschke wrote:

> OK, this was 2.5 years ago. People apparently agreed (and asked for 
> even more).
>

FWIW, I agree with #1 but think #2 is overkill and unlikely to be worth 
the effort.

--Paul Hoffman

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From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 8 Feb 2017 15:26:14 -0000

>>> 1) Each erratum should have a stable URI that can be used for 

That would be nice, and I expect pretty easy.  This works now:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?eid=nnnn

Perhaps we could add an alternate URL with a slightly cleaner syntax
and promise it's stable, e.g.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/erratum/nnnn

>>> that RFC. 

That's not much harder.  Agaim we already have this:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=nnnn

The current result is formatted to look nice in a browser, but since
it's all generated on the fly from a database, a cleaner URL that
returned the result in XML or JSON would be straightforward.

R's,
John

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2017 16:52:43 +0100

> https://www.rfc-editor.org/erratum/nnnn

Right. We already have a URI, but in the past we've been told it can't 
be used in citation because it wasn't stable :-).

> returned the result in XML or JSON would be straightforward.

Indeed. Something like this is needed so that HTML versions of RFCs can 
display up-to-date errata information.

Best regards, Julian

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From: "Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2017 15:41:41 -0800

> Heather, could you please provide some feedback?

Hi Julian,

I think the suggestions are doable, though I'll defer to the developer
when we have one working on the system. We need to do at least some
basic updates in order to support the new formats, and I'll see if one
or both of these suggestions can fit into that work. If either turn out
to be a bigger piece of work, then we'll need to hold off until we have
the resources to work on it. Right now, most of our available funds and
developer time are working on format related tools.

-Heather

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2017 19:47:33 +0100

On 2017-02-09 00:41, Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor) wrote:
> ...
> ...

FWIW, setting up stable URIs might be as easy as editing the Apache config.

That said, somebody needs to give the errata page some maintenance, see 
<https://redbot.org/?uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rfc-editor.org%2Ferrata_search.php%3Frfc%3D7230>.

For instance, the response is marked to be non-cacheable.

Best regards, Julian

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From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Feb 2017 20:27:59 -0000

>FWIW, setting up stable URIs might be as easy as editing the Apache config.

Making the stable URIs work is likely a few lines of mod_rewrite.  The harder
part is making sure that the relevant people know that those URIs have to
keep working the next time someone works on the errata.

R's,
John

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2017 12:33:51 +0100

> returned the result in XML or JSON would be straightforward.

Right.

In the meantime I put something together to scrape data from these pages 
(see 
<https://github.com/reschke/xml2rfc/commits/master/parse-errata.xslt>), 
and used it (optionally) in rfc2629.xslt.

Example:

<https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc7749.html#rfc.section.5>

Best regards, Julian