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zzq1015today at 9:20 AM2 repliesview on HN

PSA: When posting an RFC or (especially) an RFC-draft, please use the IETF Datatracker URL.

For example, this one is: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-safe-met...

The best way to view an RFC, IMHO, is to use the "htmlized" format: you can view and compare different versions, view errata for a formal RFC, and go back to Datatracker at any time.

Also, the Datatracker URL is version-insensitive, so unlike the pure HTML format, it will not be stuck on draft-14 forever.


Replies

Hackbratentoday at 10:57 AM

> please use the IETF Datatracker URL.

On my phone, your Datatracker link results in an unreadable mess of a page due to the hard-coded line breaks in the plaintext rendition of the RFC text (making it unreadable in portrait mode) and the huge sticky page nav (causing the content viewport to shrink vertically to almost zero in landscape mode). The HTML page behind OP's link reads just fine.

> The best way to view an RFC, IMHO, is to use the "htmlized" format

I don't see any choices of format such as HTML behind your link. There's a sticky nav, then a couple of pages of metadata, followed by a plaintext rendering of the RFC. What am I missing?

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zzq1015today at 9:50 AM

From the Datatracker, I can see that it was called SEARCH until draft-2 (Nov 2021), and then changed to QUERY.

Also, the previous SEARCH method was proposed in Apr 2015 (!!), but nobody took it seriously, and it never gained traction back then. A lot of software was developed/updated during the last decade, and a lot of opportunities were missed. Even if the QUERY method is turned into a formal RFC right now, expect 10+ years for everyone to adopt it, without running into HTTP-405 or 501's.