Movatterモバイル変換

• History

• Current status

• Volunteers and Staff

• Rules

History of RFC Online Project

The Requests for Comment (RFC) documents form a series of notes startedin 1969 by the research community that designed and built the ARPAnet.The RFCs series forms an archive of technical proposals, standards, andideas about packet-switched networks. The earliest RFCs were producedand distributed on paper, but network distribution began after as theFTP protocol was defined and implemented on the ARPAnet.

At some point in the history of the RFCs, when operating systems werechanged and links and/or conversions did not work, the files containingthe first 600 RFCs were lost. If youlook up an early RFCusing the RFC search engine or the RFC index file, you will find"(Not online)" under Format for many early RFCs. Fortunately,the RFC Editor (and a few others) have paper copies of all the RFCsback to the beginning. A few years ago, the RFC Editor Jon Postelinitiated a project to restore all the missing RFCs. This is theRFC Online Project.

This project depends upon volunteers who type or scan in the missingtext. The RFC Editor then edits the documents for content accuracyand style consistency, and finally puts the text online. Any RFCearlier than RFC 600 thatis online today is there by grace ofthe RFC Online project. While the initial scope of the project wasthought to be documents in the 1 - 600 range, the project was laterexpanded to include all missing documents in the 1- 800 range. AllRFCs after 800 were already online.

Current Status

With the generous help of the volunteers, over the last 3 years we havemade considerable progress. At the present time there areapproximately 200 RFCs yet to be put online, out of the first 800. ISIis currently backlogged on editing and proofreading the text; there areapproximately 100 RFCs for which we now have nroff sources that we havenot yet edited. We are making a strenuous effort to speed up thisprocess, but the RFC Online project must be of lower priority thanediting new RFCs.

There is also a significant number of RFCs that have been assigned toparticular volunteers but received no electronic text after a year. Wewill be getting in touch with those volunteers and reassigningtheir RFCs to others who have the time to do finish the job.

Volunteers and Staff

The name of the volunteer who typed in the text is included in a blockat the very end of each restored RFC. Among many volunteers, AlexMacKenzie and Mark Blanchet have provided overwhelming support for andinterest in the RFC Online Project. Their efforts have resulted in morethan 100 re-published RFCs within the 1 - 800 series.

Some of the restored RFCs contain ASCII renderings ofhand-drawn diagrams and figures that are truly heroic!

Within the RFC Editor staff at ISI, the RFC Online project has at varioustimes been supervised by Mary Kennedy, Josh Elliott, Alegre Ramos,Sandy Ginoza, and currently Allison De La Cruz.

Rules

The rules we use for RFC Online have evolved. Originally the objectivewas to make the retyped RFC look as much like the original as possible,with some important exceptions (ASCII diagrams replacing hand-drawnfigures, single-spacing replacing double-spaced text). However, a simple practice of simply numbering memos and technical notes that weretyped in a great variety of styles. A few were hand-written,and many had hand-drawn figures. More recently, the RFC Onlineproject has adopted a different objective:

Follow the current RFC standard format, whilepreserving the contents as strictly as possible

More specifically:

1. We would much prefer to obtain the document in nroff form,according to the examples in RFC 2223 and the following.

2. The following should in general be used as headers and footers:

   .ds LF <author last name(s)>.ds RF FORMFEED[Page %].ds CF.ds LH RFC ####.ds RH <Date as Month Year>.ds CH <Shortened version of title>

3. The header should be exactly 72 columns wide, right-justified.It should have the modern form:

   <---------- 72 columns ------------------------------------------------->Network Working Group                               <Full author name(s)>Request for Comments: XXXX                                  <Author site>NIC yyyy                                           <date: day month year>

   The general principle here is that we should not lose information inthe header, but we may reformat it. Exception: we omit author'saddress if it appeared in the header.We include any Obsoletes, Updates, ... , NIC number and Categories (leftmargin), if they were present.

4. The restored document is single-spaced. However, if the originalwas double-spaced, it may sometimes be necessary to add additionalblanks lines for clarity to separate paragraphs, tables, etc.

5. In general, the paragraph formatting should be modern, with noindentation of the first line of a paragraph.

6. We generally follow the modern practice of standard indent of 3,with .ti 0 for major headings.

7. Footnotes are generally be put inline or moved to end-notes.

8. We generally suppress underlining. However, there are exceptions.
   • When underlining is used for emphasis, we may use "_underlined text_" toindicate emphasis. This is a judgment call; if the editor feels theauthor really _wanted_ that emphasis, use this form. If the authorunderlined every other word, drop the underlining.

   • When underlining is essential to the meaning (for example, in acomputer typescript to show what the computer typed),underline as appropriate with hyphens.

Questions of problems should be sent torfc-editor@rfc-editor.org

Last modified 10 February 2010.