Self-Contained RFCXML: Avoid External References

In the world of internet standards, ensuring that documents stand alone and don't rely on external resources is paramount. This is especially true for Internet-Drafts that are archived. Currently, many drafts use xinclude for referencing other documents, which can lead to issues when those external resources are no longer available or accessible. Our goal is to provide a straightforward method for rfcxml authors to create a self-contained document from one that uses includes. This process should be simple and integrated into the existing authoring tools, making it a seamless part of the submission workflow. Imagine a future where every submitted draft is a complete package, ready for archiving without any broken links or missing pieces. This self-contained nature not only preserves the integrity of the document over time but also simplifies the review and archival process significantly. We want to empower authors to easily generate these self-contained versions, ensuring that the information within the draft is fully accessible now and for generations to come. This isn't just about convenience; it's about robust documentation practices that uphold the long-term availability and usability of internet standards.

The Challenge of External References in RFCXML

The core issue we're addressing is the reliance on external resources, often through xinclude, within rfcxml documents. While xinclude can be a powerful tool for managing content and promoting reuse across different drafts, it introduces a dependency. When an rfcxml document includes another document via xinclude, it means that the content isn't entirely within the submitted file. The rfcxml processor needs to fetch and incorporate that external content at the time of processing. This presents a significant problem for archiving. Archival systems are designed to preserve content in its final, immutable form. If a document relies on an external file that might be moved, deleted, or become inaccessible years down the line, the archived document effectively becomes incomplete or corrupted. This undermines the very purpose of archiving – to provide a permanent and reliable record. The goal is to have Internet-Drafts in the archive be self-contained, meaning all the necessary information to render and understand the document is present within the file itself. This requires a mechanism to resolve and embed these external references before submission. Think about the long-term implications: standards are often referenced decades after their publication. If those references break, the historical record becomes unreliable. This challenge is particularly relevant for rfcxml because it's an XML-based format, and XML has robust mechanisms for including and referencing external entities. However, for archival purposes, these dynamic inclusions need to be made static.

Creating Self-Contained RFCXML Documents

To tackle this, we need a practical solution that rfcxml authors can easily adopt. The objective is to create a self-contained document at or before the time of submission. This means that the xinclude statements, or any other form of external referencing, should be resolved, and their content embedded directly into the main rfcxml file. The resulting document must be complete enough to allow for a reverse operation – in other words, it should be possible, given the self-contained document, to potentially reconstruct the original structure with its includes, although the primary focus is on the self-contained output. This implies that the process should not discard metadata or structural information that would make a reverse transformation impossible. The ideal scenario involves developing an external tool that can be reused by both the datatracker system and the author tools. This tool would take an rfcxml document with includes as input and produce a new rfcxml document where all external references are resolved and embedded. This tool should be user-friendly, requiring minimal configuration and offering a clear command-line interface or GUI. For authors, this translates to a simple command like rfcxml-unclude my_draft.xml --output my_draft_standalone.xml. The datatracker could integrate this tool into its submission pipeline, automatically generating the self-contained version or flagging documents that still contain external references. The process should be robust, handling various types of includes and ensuring that the integrity of the original content is maintained. We are looking for a solution that is both technically sound and operationally efficient, fitting smoothly into the existing IETF workflow.

Technical Considerations for Resolving Includes

When we talk about creating a self-contained rfcxml document, the technical implementation of resolving includes is crucial. The primary mechanism we're concerned with is xinclude. An xinclude element in an XML document tells the parser to fetch the content from a specified URI and insert it at that location. For rfcxml, this often means including other XML fragments, potentially defining terms, boilerplate text, or even entire sections. The process of making the document self-contained involves a robust XML parser that can correctly interpret and resolve these xinclude directives. The tool we envision would essentially act as an xinclude-aware processor. It would read the input rfcxml file, identify all xinclude elements, fetch the content from the URIs specified, and then seamlessly weave that content into the main document, replacing the xinclude element with the fetched XML. This resolution must be recursive if includes can themselves contain includes. Furthermore, the tool needs to handle potential errors gracefully – what happens if an included file is not found or is inaccessible? The tool should report these issues clearly to the author. The resulting output should still be a valid rfcxml document, adhering to the rfcxml schema. This ensures that the self-contained document is still processable by other tools. The concept of a