Subject: A list of AD nits for IDs being submitted to the IESG

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 12:48:41 +0200

Here is a replacement for what we've called for a long time the
"id-nits" list.  Some of it is a list of format nits, some of it
is about process issues, such as the informative/normative reference
split, and some of it is about content issues that cross so many
working groups and are so basic, the IESG ends up asking for fixes in
dozens of submitted documents.

Basically, this is something like a "please revise" form letter
- - saying nothing about the real content, but trying to make sure that there 
are no problems with the format or completeness of the submission.

Some of the material in the list is intended to be applied early
on in the document's development (the content issues).

The list is meant to be used thereafter by authors to check
the draft and by the WG Chairs before submission to the AD.
As the list says, the intention is for documents to check against
the list before the AD puts them on the IESG's agenda.

We'd like your comments.  Is it complete, clear? Useful?

Once we have integrated your feedback, we will publish the document on the 
IETF web pages.

- ---------------------------------------------------------------

AD Review of I-Ds
Date: October 4, 2002

All Internet Drafts which are offered for publication as RFCs must
conform to the following requirements or they will be returned to the
author(s) for revision

The WG Chairs are responsible for having this list checked before
submission to the ADs.

The content issues have to be checked early in the development of
documents, being technically integral. The WG Chairs are responsible
for this.

The ADs will check the list before submission to the IESG.

Responsibility for all checking is with the authors the case of an
individual submission.

1. Form nits:

1.1 Formatting

- - See Section 3, "Instructions to RFC Authors"
 (draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-02.txt) for details and further rules.
- - Not beyond the 72nd column of a line
    o This is especially important for diagrams and code, which the RFC
      Editor may not be able to trivially reformat to fall within the
      margins.
- - Must be ragged right
- - No hyphenation for line-breaks
- - No footnotes
- - ASCII-only, no control characters (other than CR, NL & FF)
- - Do not number the "Status of Memo" or Abstract sections
- - Do not add a numbered reference in the ID boilerplate to
    RFC 2026 (makes it harder for the RFC editor to process
    the document when they strip off the ID boilerplate)
- - Reasonably well formatted for readibility and clarity.
- - Use network byte order in diagrams (see draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-02.txt
    section 3.4)

1.2 Required sections - all IDs

- - Internet Draft boilerplate
  o Must contain boilerplate that permits publication as an RFC
    (see http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt)

- - List of authors/editors
  o There should not be > 5 authors/editors
    (see http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html)
- - Abstract
- - Table of Contents is required if > 15 pages
- - Introduction
- - Security Considerations
- - References
  o Must be split into normative and non-normative sections
    (see http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html)

- - Author's Address
- - IPR notices
    o From RFC 2026 sec 10.4 (A) and 10.4(B) and possibly 10.4(D)
- - Copyright Notice
    o From RFC 2026 sec 10.4(C)

1.3 Sometimes-required sections

- - IANA considerations
      o Required if IANA has to create a new registry or modify rules for
                an existing registry.
      o See RFC 2434, and also RFC 2780 in some cases.

2. Content issues

- - Abstract
    o Should be meaningful to someone not versed in the technology; most
        abbreviations must be expanded on first use
    o no citations
    o See: draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-02.txt section 4.5.

- - Security Considerations section
    o Must have meaningful exploration of security issues raised by
        proposal, should include both risks and description of solutions or
        workarounds

- - If MUST etc used, the terms must be defined (or RFC 2119 referenced)
    o Also read RFC 2119 to see what it says about using MUST etc

- - Specific IPR (e.g., patent claims & terms) must not be in an RFC --
    any claims must go to the IPR web page and notice that there is some
    IPR claim (RFC 2026 sec 10.4(D) must be included in the RFC

- - All user-visible text fields must be internationalizable
    o See RFC 2277. For most cases, this means UTF-8.
    o If text fields are included in some calculation, like matching,
      sorting etc, it must be described in detail how those operations are
      applied to the Unicode/ISO 10646 character set. see "stringprep" for
      more information on the recommended way of handling comparisons.

- - All MIBs must compile cleanly using "smilint -l 9"
    o An email service is available for the check.
        Extract the MIB form the document and send it
        in the body of an email to [email-masked].

- - All ABNF must be checked. Tool available from www.apps.ietf.org
    o See RFC 2234 for information about IETF ABNF. Include reference
                to RFC 2234.

- - Addresses used in examples should prefer use of fully qualified
    domain names to literal IP addresses, prefer use of example fqdn's
    such as foo.example.com to real-world fqdn's.

- - References
    o All references must be stable and resolvable.
    o An HTTP URL only is not generally considered a stable reference;
        exceptions can be made in some cases

    o In case of references to I-Ds, use the format
          "title" (work in progress) (I-D name).
        Normative references to IDs will cause a standards-track or BCP
            document to wait for the referenced RFCs to be published.
        Non-normative references will have the I-D name stripped out
            by the RFC Editor.

3. Protocol Issues

- - Avoid IPv4 specificity, both IPv4 and IPv6 must be supportable

- - No application can cause catastrophic congestion. See RFC 2914 for
    details - applications using TCP or SCTP will normally fulfill this
    automatically.

- - If any sort of end-to-end checksum or integrity check is being used
    (especially, but not limited to, cryptographic checksums or MACs),
    specify precisely the contents of the fields to be checksummed, and
    exactly what order the operations are done in. Pay special attention
    to any area reserved for the checksum itself.

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