Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-html-spec-02.txt

Roy T. Fielding (fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU)
Tue, 16 May 95 17:45:36 EDT

> Just announced is
> diff first draft-ietf-html-spec-02.txt
> which has me confused. I already have a doc by that name, obtained on
> 29 March. It doesn't look as though it came via email, so I imagine
> (wrongly?) that I obtained it from ds.internic.net. Is there some
> confusion in numbering?

Allow me to explain ...

Internet-Draft numbers are supposed to be assigned when a version is
updated in the I-D archives. Unfortunately, the author
has to anticipate that update when submitting a new version, and thus
must include the number in the text. Furthermore, in order to prevent
a last minute rush, updates to the archive are not allowed during the
week prior to a meeting.

In this case, I submitted a draft 02 on Mar 29, knowing that it was too
late [reason: the timing of the last call required immediate action].
However, since we have our own archive, this was not a problem in terms
of people being able to access the draft, and I had planned on submitting
another update request after the meeting.

Now here's the point where the plan crumbles: Dan got excited and
sent another draft to the mailing list on May 31. Ooops. That means
I can't resubmit draft 02 without causing massive confusion.
Worse, both Dan and I were in conference hell, so neither of us were
around to resubmit the draft.

None of this would be a problem if an update of the spec
was produced fairly soon after WebWorld. Unfortunately, Dan got a severe
case of tool-itis and reorganized the spec first, leaving us once
again in a state where the working draft was not in I-D form. :(

So, I asked Dan to provide us with a text version of what he currently
had available, and that copy was submitted as draft 03. Unfortunately
again, the I-D editor (Cynthia) had no record of any 02 draft, so the
new draft was re-numbered 02. You can tell the difference by the date.

Draft 02, dated May 6, 1995 is the current HTML 2.0 spec

Sorry for the confusion. Hopefully, new drafts can now be generated
in a fast and furious fashion, so that we'll soon be beyond the 04 level.

p.s. Regarding the DTD, Terry is right in that it forms an integral
part of the eventual proposed standard. It will not be stored
at IANA, since IANA will have no authority to update the DTD.
As far as we are concerned, there exists no official copy of
the HTML DTD, decl, and public text other than that provided
in an archived version of the current <draft-ietf-html-spec>.

External copies can be provided, of course, but only the one
inside the (eventual) RFC is authoritative.

....Roy T. Fielding Department of ICS, University of California, Irvine USA
<fielding@ics.uci.edu>
<URL:http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/grad/Software/fielding>