Writing Internet-Drafts And RFCs In AsciiDoc (AsciiRFC)
draft-ribose-asciirfc-00
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type |
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Ronald Henry Tse , Nick Nicholas , Jeffrey Lau | ||
| Last updated | 2017-11-20 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| IETF conflict review | conflict-review-ribose-asciirfc, conflict-review-ribose-asciirfc, conflict-review-ribose-asciirfc, conflict-review-ribose-asciirfc, conflict-review-ribose-asciirfc, conflict-review-ribose-asciirfc | ||
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draft-ribose-asciirfc-00
Network Working Group R. Tse
Internet-Draft N. Nicholas
Intended status: Informational J. Lau
Expires: May 24, 2018 P. Brasolin
Ribose
November 20, 2017
Writing Internet-Drafts And RFCs In AsciiDoc (AsciiRFC)
draft-ribose-asciirfc-00
Abstract
This document describes the AsciiDoc syntax extension called AsciiRFC
designed for authoring IETF Internet-Drafts and RFCs.
AsciiDoc is a human readable document markup language which affords
more granular control over markup than comparable schemes such as
Markdown.
The AsciiRFC syntax is designed to allow the author to entirely focus
on text, providing the full power of the resulting XML RFC through
the AsciiDoc language, while abstracting away the need to manually
edit XML, including references.
This document itself was written and generated into XML RFC v2
(RFC7749) and XML RFC v3 (RFC7991) directly through asciidoctor-rfc,
an AsciiRFC generator.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on May 24, 2018.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Document Structure And AsciiDoctor Syntax . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Header And Document Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6. Sections and Paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
8. Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
9. Blockquotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
10. Notes And Asides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
11. Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
12. Inline Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
13. Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
14. Crossreferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
15. Inclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
16. Encoding and Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
17. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
17.1. Using Raw RFC XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
17.2. Using preprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
18. RFC XML features not supported in Asciidoctor . . . . . . . . 27
19. Authoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
20. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
21. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
22. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
22.1. Example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
23. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
23.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
23.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
23.3. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
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Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1. Introduction
As specified in [RFC7990], the IETF intends for the canonical format
of RFCs to transition from plain-text ASCII to RFC XML v3 [RFC7991].
While plain-text will continue to be accepted from authors by the
IETF, at least in the short- to medium-term, XML will be preferred
for submission, and any plain-text submissions will need to be
converted to RFC XML v3.
The transition to RFC XML v3 places added onus on authors to generate
compliant XML. This need is already met for RFC XML v2 [RFC7749] by
tools such as MMark [1] and Kramdown [2], both based on the popular
Markdown markup language [3] [RFC7763] [RFC7764].
Asciidoctor [4] is an alternative markup language to Markdown, with
features that make it attractive as a markup language for RFC with
XML output.
Compared to Markdown [5],
o Asciidoctor was designed from the beginning as a publishing
language: it was initially intended as a plain-text alternative to
the DocBook XML schema. For that reason, Asciidoctor natively
supports the full range of formatting required by RFC XML
(including notes, tables, bibliographies, source-code blocks, and
definition lists), without resorting to embedded HTML or Markdown
"flavours".
o Asciidoctor is extensible, with a well-defined API.
o Asciidoctor allows granular control of rendering, including user-
specified attribute of text blocks.
o Asciidoctor allows document inclusion, for managing large-scale
documentation projects.
o Asciidoctor allows granular control of permutations of block
nesting, such as source code within lists or definition lists
within unordered lists.
o As a more formal counterpart to Markdown, Asciidoctor is well-
suited to generating XML that needs to conform to a specified
schema.
Section 1.2 of [RFC7764] famously states that "there is no such thing
as "invalid" Markdown, there is no standard demanding adherence to
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the Markdown syntax, and there is no governing body that guides or
impedes its development." While there are contexts where that lack
of rigour is helpful, the authoring of RFCs does have a standard and
a governing body, and there is such a thing as invalid RFC XML. A
more rigorous counterpart to Markdown, which still preserves its
basic approach to formatting, is useful in generating RFC XML that
encompasses a fuller subset of the specification, and preempting
malformed RFC XML output.
As with Markdown, there is a wide range of tools that can render
Asciidoctor; so Asciidoctor drafts of RFC documents can be previewed
and accessed without depending on the RFC tools ecosystem. Our
porting of RFC XML to Asciidoctor has aimed to ensure that, as much
as possible, the Asciidoctor being used for RFC is generic
Asciidoctor, which can be processed by Asciidoctor tools in general.
(The only exception to this as an add-on is the optional bibliography
module, which allows bibliographies to be assembled on the fly based
on citations in a document.)
2. Conventions Used in This Document
The key words "*MUST*", "*MUST NOT*", "*REQUIRED*", "*SHALL*",
"*SHALL NOT*", "*SHOULD*", "*SHOULD NOT*", "*RECOMMENDED*", "*MAY*",
and "*OPTIONAL*" in this document are to be interpreted as described
in [RFC2119].
2.1. Definitions
TODO.
3. Document Structure And AsciiDoctor Syntax
The syntax of Asciidoctor is presented in the Asciidoctor user manual
[6].
Asciidoctor consists of:
o A document header, containing a title, a list of authors, and
document attributes in lines prefixed with ":"
o An optional document preamble, separated from document header by a
blank line
o A number of sections, set off by a section title (a line prefixed
with two or more "=". A section may contain:
* Other sections, whose level of nesting is indicated by the
number of "=" in their header
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* Blocks of text. Blocks can have metadata (including a title,
an anchor for cross-references, and attributes.) Blocks can
be:
+ Paragraphs, which are terminated by blank lines.
+ Lists. List items are by default paragraphs, but can span
over multiple paragraphs.
+ Delimited blocks (with a line delimiter on either side of
them); these include tables, notes, sidebars, source code,
block quotes, examples, and unprocessed content (e.g. raw
XML). Delimited blocks contain by default one or more
paragraphs.
+ List items can contain other blocks, including both nested
lists and delimited blocks.
+ Some delimited blocks can contain other delimited blocks;
for example, examples can contain source code as well as
discussion in paragraphs.
* Blocks of text consist of inline text, which themselves can
contain markup.
Inline markup includes:
o Text formatting: bold, italic, superscript, subscript, monospace
o Custom markup macros
o URLs, including display text
o Inline anchors
o Cross-references to anchors (IDs of blocks or spans of text),
including display text
o Images, audio, and visual files
o Index terms
o Equations (native support for AsciiMathML [7] and TeX/LaTeX [8],
via the MathJax [9] tool
o Footnotes
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The Asciidoctor document structure aligns with the RFC XML v2 and v3
structure. In the following, v3 equivalences are given:
o Header: "<rfc>" attributes, most "front" elements
o Preamble: "front/abstract" and "front/note"
o Sections: "middle/section" elements
o Sections with "bibliography" style attributes: "back/references"
elements.
o Sections with "appendix" style attributes: "back/section"
elements.
o Paragraphs: "t" elements
o Lists: "ul", "ol", "dl" elements
o Delimited blocks: "artwork", "aside", "blockquote", "figure",
"note", "sourcecode", "table"
o Inline markup: "bcp14", "br", "cref", "em", "eref", "iref",
"relref", "strong", "sub", "sup", "tt", "xref"
Full details of the mapping of Asciidoctor elements to RFC XML v2 and
v3 elements, and of how to convert Asciidoctor documents to RFC XML,
are given in <https://github.com/riboseinc/asciidoctor-
rfc/blob/master/README.adoc>. The following gives an overview of how
to create an RFC XML document in Asciidoctor, with some pitfalls to
be aware of. Illustrations are in RFC XML v3, although the converter
deals with both versions of RFC XML.
4. Header And Document Attributes
The header gives the document title, followed by an optional author
attribution, and a series of document attributes, with no carriage
return breaks.
For example:
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= Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
David Waitzman <dwaitzman@BBN.COM>
:doctype: internet-draft
:abbrev: IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
:obsoletes: 10, 120
:updates: 2010, 2120
:status: informational
:name: internet-draft-avian-transmission-00
:ipr: trust200902
:area: Internet
:workgroup: Network Working Group
:keyword: avians, datagrams
:revdate: 1990-04-01T00:00:00Z
:organization: BBN STC
:phone: (617) 873-4323
:uri: http://bbn.com
:street: 10 Moulton Street
:city: Cambridge
:code: MA 02238
:rfcedstyle: yes
:text-list-symbols: yes
:rfc2629xslt: true
The document attributes are used to populate "rfc" attributes,
"front" elements, and document-level processing instructions.
o ":doctype:" determines whether the document will be considered
"rfc" or "internet-draft", and interprets other attributes
accordingly.
o Certain attributes ("workgroup", "area", "keyword") are comma
delimited, and result in repeated RFC XML elements.
o A few attributes are specific to the operation of the RFC XML
document converter:
* ":no-rfc-bold-bcp14: false" overrides the conversion of
boldface uppercase BCP14 [RFC2119] words with the "bcp14"
element.
* ":smart-quotes false:" overrides Asciidoctor's conversion of
straight quotes and apostrophes to smart quotes and
apostrophes.
* ":inline-definition-lists: true" overrides the RFC XML v2
"idnits" requirement that a blank line be inserted between a
definition list term and its definition.
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The foregoing Asciidoc renders into RFC XML v3 as:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="rfc2629.xslt"?>
<!DOCTYPE rfc SYSTEM "rfc2629.dtd">
<?rfc rfcedstyle="yes"?>
<?rfc text-list-symbols="yes"?>
<?rfc strict="yes"?>
<?rfc compact="yes"?>
<?rfc subcompact="no"?>
<?rfc toc="yes"?>
<?rfc tocdepth="4"?>
<?rfc symrefs="yes"?>
<?rfc sortrefs="yes"?>
<rfc ipr="trust200902" obsoletes="10, 120" updates="2010, 2120"
submissiontype="IETF" preptime="2017-11-18T01:52:35Z" version="3">
<front>
<title abbrev="IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers">
A Standard for the Transmission of IP
Datagrams on Avian Carriers
</title>
<seriesinfo name="Internet-Draft" status="informational"
stream="IETF" value="internet-draft-avian-transmission-00" />
<author fullname="David Waitzman" surname="Waitzman">
<organization>BBN STC</organization>
<address>
<postal>
<street>10 Moulton Street</street>
<city>Cambridge</city>
<code>MA 02238</code>
</postal>
<phone>(617) 873-4323</phone>
<email>dwaitzman@BBN.COM</email>
<uri>http://bbn.com</uri>
</address>
</author>
<date day="1" month="April" year="1990" />
<area>Internet</area>
<workgroup>Network Working Group</workgroup>
<keyword>avians</keyword>
<keyword>datagrams</keyword>
Details of a second, third etc. author, including their organization
and contact details, are provided by suffixing the author attribute
with "_2", "_3" etc.:
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John Doe Horton <john.doe@email.com>;
Billy Bob Thornton <billy.thornton@email.com>
:fullname: John Doe Horton
:lastname: Horton
:forename_initials: J. D.
:role: editor
:organization: Ribose
:fax: 555 5555
:email: john.doe@email.com
:uri: http://example.com
:phone: 555 5655
:street: 57 Mt Pleasant St
:city: Dullsville
:region: NSW
:country: Australia
:code: 3333
:fullname_2: Billy Bob Thornton
:lastname_2: Thornton
:forename_initials_2: B. B.
:role_2: editor
:organization_2: IBM
:fax_2: 555 6666
:email_2: billy.thornton@email.com
:uri_2: http://ibm.com
:phone_2: 555 6655
:street_2: 67 Mt Pleasant St
:city_2: Dulltown
:region_2: VIC
:country_2: UK
:code_2: 44444
The initial author attribution in Asciidoctor, e.g. "John Doe
Horton<john.doe@email.com>; Billy Bob Thornton
<billy.thornton@email.com>" in the example above, expects a strict
format of First Name, zero or more Middle Names, Last name, and
cannot process honorifics like "Dr" or suffixes like "Jr". Name
attributes with any degree of complexity should be overriden by using
the ":fullname:" and ":lastname:" attributes. The
":forename_initials:" replaces the built-in ":initials:" attribute
(which includes the surname initial), and is not automatically
populated from the name attribution.
5. Preamble
The preamble in Asciidoctor is the text between the end of the
document header (which terminates with a blank line) and the first
section of text. Any paragraphs of text in the preamble are treated
as an abstract, and may optionally be tagged with the "abstract"
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style attribute. Any notes in the preamble are treated as a "note"
element. For example:
= A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
David Waitzman <dwaitzman@BBN.COM>
:doctype: internet-draft
:abbrev: IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
:status: informational
:name: internet-draft-avian-transmission-00
Preamble content.
More Preamble content.
NOTE: This is a note.
[NOTE]
.Title of Note
====
This is another note.
====
<rfc submissionType="IETF" prepTime="2017-11-18T02:55:47Z" version="3">
<front>
<title abbrev="IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers">
A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
</title>
<seriesInfo name="Internet-Draft" status="informational" stream="IETF"
value="internet-draft-avian-transmission-00"/>
<author fullname="David Waitzman" surname="Waitzman">
<address>
<email>dwaitzman@BBN.COM</email>
</address>
</author>
<date day="18" month="November" year="2017"/>
<abstract><t>Preamble content.</t>
<t>More Preamble content.</t>
</abstract>
<note>
<t>This is a note.</t>
</note>
<note>
<name>Title of Note</name>
<t>This is another note.</t>
</note>
</front>
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6. Sections and Paragraphs
Section headers are given with a sequence of "=", the number of "="
giving the header level. Section numbering is toggled with the in-
document attribute ":sectnums:" (on), ":sectnums!:" (off)
:sectnums:
[toc=exclude]
== Section 1
Para 1
=== Subsection 1.1
Para 1a
:sectnums!:
[toc=default]
=== Subsection 1.2
Para 2
==== Subsection 1.2.1
Para 3
<section anchor="_section_1" toc="exclude" numbered="true">
<name>Section 1</name>
<t>Para 1</t>
<section anchor="_subsection_1_1" numbered="true">
<name>Subsection 1.1</name>
<t>Para 1a</t>
</section>
<section anchor="_subsection_1_2" toc="default" numbered="false">
<name>Subsection 1.2</name>
<t>Para 2</t>
<section anchor="_subsection_1_2_1" numbered="false">
<name>Subsection 1.2.1</name>
<t>Para 3</t>
</section>
</section>
</section>
7. Figures
AsciiDoc Examples (corresponding to RFC XML figures), source code
listings, and literals (preformatted text) are all delimited blocks.
Listings and literals can occur nested within examples. If an
Asciidoctor listing or literal occurs outside of an example, the RFC
XML converter will supply the surrounding figure element:
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.Figure 1
====
.figure1.txt
....
Figures are only permitted to contain listings
(sourcecode), images (artwork), or literal (artwork)
....
[source,ruby]
----
def listing(node)
result = []
if node.parent.context != :example
result << "<figure>"
end
end
----
====
<figure>
<name>Figure 1</name>
<artwork type="ascii-art" name="figure1.txt">
Figures are only permitted to contain listings
(sourcecode), images (artwork), or literal (artwork)
</artwork>
<sourcecode type="ruby">
def listing(node)
result = []
if node.parent.context != :example
result << "<figure>"
end
end
</sourcecode>
</figure>
8. Lists
Asciidoctor supports ordered, unordered, and definition lists.
Indentation of ordered and unordered lists is indicated by repeating
the list item prefix ("*" and "." respectively.) List attributes
specify the type of symbol used for ordered lists:
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[loweralpha]
. First
. Second
[upperalpha]
.. Third
.. Fourth
. Fifth
. Sixth
<ol anchor="id" type="a">
<li>First</li>
<li>
<t>Second</t>
<ol type="A">
<li>Third</li>
<li>Fourth</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Fifth</li>
<li>Sixth</li>
</ol>
A list item by default spans a single paragraph. A following
paragraph or other block element can be appended to the current list
item by prefixing it with "+" in a separate line (Asciidoc list
continuation [10].)
Notes:: Note 1.
+
Note 2.
+
Note 3.
<dl>
<dt>Notes</dt>
<dd>
<t>Note 1.</t>
<t>Note 2.</t>
<t>Note 3.</t>
</dd>
</dl>
List continuations can also be embed to populate a list item with a
sequence of blocks as a unit (in an Asciidoc open block):
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* List Entry 1
* List Entry 2
+
--
Note 2.
....
Literal
....
Note 3.
--
<ul>
<li>List Entry 1</li>
<li>
<t>
List Entry 2
</t>
<t>
Note 2.
</t>
<figure>
<artwork type="ascii-art">
Literal
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>
Note 3.
</t>
</li>
</ul>
Asciidoctor considers paragraphs to be the basic level of blocks, and
does not permit lists to be nested within them: text after a list is
considered to be a new paragraph. So markup like the following
cannot be generated via Asciidoctor:
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<t>
This is the start of a paragraph.
<ul>
<li>List Entry 1</li>
<li>
<t>List Entry 2</t>
<t>Note 2.</t>
<figure>
<artwork type="ascii-art">
Literal
</artwork>
</figure>
<t>Note 3.</t>
</li>
</ul>
9. Blockquotes
Asciidoctor supports blockquotes and quotations of verse; its block
quotations permit arbitrary levels of quote nesting. RFC XML v3 only
supports one level of blockquotes. RFC XML v3 does not support line
breaks outside of tables, so verse quotations are converted to prose.
[quote,attribution="Monty Python",citetitle="http://foo.bar"]
____
Dennis: Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
King Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway!
* Did you hear that?
* Did you hear that, eh?
* That's what I'm on about!
** Did you see him repressing me?
** You saw him, Didn't you?
____
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<blockquote quotedfrom="Monty Python" cite="http://foo.bar">
<t>Dennis: Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help! Help! I’m being repressed!</t>
<t>King Arthur: Bloody peasant!</t>
<t>Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway!</t>
<ul>
<li>Did you hear that?</li>
<li>Did you hear that, eh?</li>
<li>
<t>That’s what I’m on about!</t>
<ul>
<li>Did you see him repressing me?</li>
<li>You saw him, Didn’t you?</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
10. Notes And Asides
Asciidoctor supports a range of "admonitions", including notes,
warnings, and tips. They are indicated by a paragraph prefix (e.g.
"WARNING:"), or as a block with an admonition style attribute. All
admonitions are converted to "note" elements in the document
preamble, and "cref" documents in the main document. RFC XML v3 also
supports asides (Asciidoctor sidebars):
== Section 1
[NOTE,source=GBS]
.Note Title
====
Any admonition inside the body of the text is a comment.
====
****
Sidebar
Another sidebar
* This is a list
....
And this is ascii-art
....
****
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<section anchor="_section_1" numbered="false">
<name>Section 1</name>
<t>
<cref display="true" source="GBS">
Any admonition inside the body of the text is a comment.
</cref>
</t>
<aside>
<t>Sidebar</t>
<t>Another sidebar</t>
<ul>
<li>This is a list</li>
</ul>
<figure>
<artwork type="ascii-art">
And this is ascii-art
</artwork>
</figure>
</aside>
Note that no inline formatting is permitted in RFC XML v2, and it is
stripped for v2 by the converter.
Because paragraphs in Asciidoctor cannot contain any other blocks, a
comment at the end of a paragraph is treated as a new block. In the
document converter, any such comments are moved inside the preceding
RFC XML paragraph; if the comment is at the start of a section, as in
the example above, it is wrapped inside a paragraph.
While Asciidoctor has comments proper, notated with initial "//",
they are ignore by the document converter, so they will not appear as
XML comments in the converter output.
11. Tables
Asciidoctor tables, like RFC XML v3, support distinct table heads,
bodies and feet, cells spanning multiple rows and columns, and
horizontal alignment. The larger range of formatting options
available in RFC XML v2 is also supported.
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.Table Title
|===
|head | head
h|header cell | body cell
| | body cell
2+| colspan of 2
.2+|rowspan of 2 | cell
|cell
^|centre aligned cell | cell
<|left aligned cell | cell
>|right aligned cell | cell
|foot | foot
|===
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<table>
<name>Table Title</name>
<thead>
<tr>
<th align="left">head</th>
<th align="left">head</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="left">header cell</th>
<td align="left">body cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="left">body cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" align="left">colspan of 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2" align="left">rowspan of 2</td>
<td align="left">cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">centre aligned cell</td>
<td align="left">cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left">left aligned cell</td>
<td align="left">cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">right aligned cell</td>
<td align="left">cell</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td align="left">foot</td>
<td align="left">foot</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
</table>
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Neither version of RFC XML is as expressive in its table structure as
Asciidoctor; RFC XML for example does not permit blocks within table
cells.
12. Inline Formatting
Like RFC XML v3, Asciidoctor supports italics, boldface, monospace,
subscripts and superscripts:
_Text_ *Text* `Text` ^Superscript^ ~Subscript~
<t><em>Text</em> <strong>Text</strong> <tt>Text</tt>
<sup>Superscript</sup> <sub>Subscript</sub></t>
RFC XML v3 also supports tagging of BCP14 keywords [RFC2119]; this is
done in Asciidoctor either by tagging them with a custom formatting
span ("bcp14#mustnot#"), or by converting by default BCP14 boldface
all-caps words:
This [bcp14]#must not# stand
This *MUST NOT* stand
<t>This <bcp14>MUST NOT</bcp14> stand</t>
<t>This <bcp14>MUST NOT</bcp14> stand</t>
Any spans of BCP14 text delimited by inline formatting delimiters
needs to be contained within a single line of text; the Asciidoctor
API breaks up formatting spans across line breaks.
Formatting delimiters like "*" can be escaped with backslash; double
formatting delimiters, like "<spanx style="strong">" and "__", need
to be escaped with double backslash("\\</spanx>"). Escaping
delimiters is not always reliable, and for double delimiters it is
preferable to use HTML entities ("**"), or attribute
references:
:dblast: **
`{dblast}`
13. Links
Common URL formats are recognised automatically as hyperlinks, and
are rendered as such; any hyperlinked text is appended after the
hyperlink in square brackets:
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http://example.com/[linktext]
<t><eref target="http://example.com/">linktext</eref></t>
To prevent hyperlinking of a URL, prefix it with a backslash.
14. Crossreferences
Anchors for crossreferences are notated as "[[...]]" or "[#...]".
Anchors can be inserted on their own line in front of most blocks.
Asciidoctor supports anchors in a much wider range of contexts than
is supported than RFC XML v3 (let alone v2); anchors that are not
supported for that version of RFC XML are simply ignored by the
converter. Note that anchors in RFC XML are constrained to the
format "[A-Za-z_:][[A-Za-z0-9_:.-]*".
Cross-references to anchors are notated as "<""..."">"; cross-
references with custom text as "<""reference,text"">". Asciidoctor
does not otherwise support attributes on cross-references, but the
converter extracts format information from templated text within
cross-references: "format=x:text" populates the "xref@format"
attribute, while a section number followed by one of the words "of,
parens, bare, text" is treated as a "relref" reference to an external
document.
[[crossreference]]
== Section 1
== Section 2
See <<crossreference>>.
== Section 3
See <<crossreference,text>>
== Section 4
See <<crossreference,format=counter: text>>
== Section 5
See <<crossreference,format=title>>
See <<crossreference,1.3 of>>
<<crossreference,1.4 comma: text>>
<<crossreference#fragment1,2.5.3 parens>>
<<crossreference#fragment2,6.2a bare: text>>
<section anchor="crossreference" numbered="false">
<name>Section 1</name>
</section>
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<section anchor="_section_2" numbered="false">
<name>Section 2</name>
<t>
See
<xref target="crossreference">
</xref>.
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="_section_3" numbered="false">
<name>Section 3</name>
<t>
See
<xref target="crossreference">
text
</xref>
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="_section_4" numbered="false">
<name>Section 4</name>
<t>
See
<xref format="counter" target="crossreference">
text
</xref>
</t>
</section>
<section anchor="_section_5" numbered="false">
<name>
Section 5
</name>
<t>
See
<xref format="title" target="crossreference" />
</t>
<t>
See
<relref section="1.3" displayformat="of"
target="crossreference" />
<relref section="1.4" displayformat="comma"
target="crossreference">
text
</relref>
<relref relative="fragment1" section="2.5.3"
displayformat="parens" target="crossreference" />
<relref relative="fragment2" section="6.2a"
displayformat="bare" target="crossreference">
text
</relref>
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</t>
</section>
15. Inclusions
The Asciidoctor "include" directive [11] is used to include external
files in a master Asciidoctor document. The directive is capable of
sophisticated document merging, including adjusting the heading
levels of the included text, selecting text within specified tags or
line numbers to be included, and adjusting the indentation of code
snippets in merged text:
\include::path[
leveloffset=_offset_,
lines=_ranges_,
tag(s)=_name(s)_,
indent=_depth_
]
16. Encoding and Entities
XML accepted the full range of characters in the world's languages
through UTF-8 character encoding, and one of the motivations for the
move from plain text to RFC XML has been to allow non-ASCII
characters to be included in RFCs. However, current RFC XML v2 tools
still do not support UTF-8, and other tool support for UTF-8 also
remains patchy. Out of an abundance of caution, the RFC XML
converter uses US-ASCII for its character encoding, and renders any
non-ASCII characters as entities.
The converter accepts HTML entities in Asciidoctor, even though they
are not part of the XML specification; HTML entities such as " "
feature in examples of RFC XML provided by the IETF. In order to
prevent dependence of the XML output from extraneous entity
definitions, any such entities are rendered in the XML as decimal
character entities.
17. Bibliography
Asciidoctor has a simple encoding of bibliographies, but it is not
adequate for the complexity of bibliographic markup supported in RFC
XML. RFC documents overwhelmingly cite other RFC documents, and
canonical RFC XML bibliographic entries are available at
<http://xml.resource.org/public/rfc/bibxml/> ; so it would be
inefficient to encode those entries in Asciidoctor, only to have them
converted back to RFC XML.
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The converter provides two means of incorporating bibliographies into
RFC documents authored in Asciidoctor:
o using raw RFC XML; and
o assembling bibliographies in preprocessing.
In either case, the RFC XML needs to be well-formed; missing closing
tags can lead to erratic behaviour in the converter.
17.1. Using Raw RFC XML
In the first, bibliographic citations are handled like all other
cross-references. The bibliographic entries for normative and
informative references are given in the Asciidoctor as passthrough
blocks, which contain the raw RFC XML for all references; document
conversion leaves the raw RFC XML in place. This approach requires
authors to maintain the normative and informative bibliographies
within the document, to update them as citations are added and
removed, and to sort them manually.
Some datagram padding may be needed.<<RFC7253>>
[bibliography]
== Normative References
++++
<reference anchor='RFC7253'
target='https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7253'>
<front>
<title>Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations
Section in RFCs</title>
<author initials="T." surname="Krovetz">
<organization>Sacramento State</organization>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Rogaway">
<organization>UC Davis</organization>
</author>
<date month='May' year='2014'/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="7253"/>
</reference>
++++
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<t>Some datagram padding may be needed <xref target="RFC7253"/></t>
</middle><back>
<references anchor="_references">
<name>Normative References</name>
<reference anchor='RFC7253'
target='https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7253'>
<front>
<title>Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations
Section in RFCs</title> <author initials="T." surname="Krovetz">
<organization>Sacramento State</organization>
</author>
<author initials="P." surname="Rogaway">
<organization>UC Davis</organization>
</author>
<date month='May' year='2014'/>
</front>
<seriesInfo name="RFC" value="7253"/>
</reference>
</references>
17.2. Using preprocessing
The alternative method is to use a preprocessing tool, asciidoc-
bibliography [12], to import citations into the Asciidoctor document
from an external file of references.
The references file consists of RFC XML reference entries, and still
needs to be managed manually; however the bibliographies are
assembled from that file, sorted, and inserted into the normative and
informative references in preprocessing. Citations in the document
itself are given as macros to be interpreted by the preprocessor;
this allows them to be split into normative and informative
references. (The MMark tool likewise splits reference citations into
normative and informative.)
Integration with the asciidoc-bibliography gem proceeds as follows:
1. Create an RFC XML references file, consisting of a "<references>"
element with individual "<reference>" elements inserted, as would
be done for the informative and normative references normally.
The references file will contain all possible references to be
used in the file; the bibliography gem will select which
references have actually been cited in the document.
A. Rather than hand crafting RFC XML references for RFC
documents, you should download them from an authoritative
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source; e.g. <http://xml.resource.org/public/rfc/bibxml/
reference.RFC.2119.xml>
B. Unlike the case for RFC XML documents created manually, the
references file does not recognise XML entities and will not
attempt to download them during processing. Any references
to <http://xml.resource.org/public/rfc/bibxml/> will need to
be downloaded and inserted into the references file.
C. The RFC XML in the references file will need to be
appropriate to the version of RFC XML used in the main
document, as usual. Note that RFC XML v2 references are
forward compatible with v3; v3 contains a couple of
additional elements.
2. Add to the main document header attributes referencing the
references file (":bibliography-database:"), and the bibliography
style (":bibliography-style:rfc-v3").
3. References to a normative reference are inserted with the macro
"cite:norm[id]" instead of "<""id"">", where "id" is the anchor
of the reference.
4. References to an infomrative reference are inserted with the
macro "cite:info[id]" instead of "<""id"">", where "id" is the
anchor of the reference.
5. Normative and Informative References are inserted in the document
through a macro, which occurs where the RFC XML references would
be inserted:
[bibliography]
== Normative References
++++
bibliography::norm[]
++++
[bibliography]
== Informative References
++++
bibliography::info[]
++++
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18. RFC XML features not supported in Asciidoctor
The following features of RFC XML are not supported by the
Asciidoctor converter, and would need to be adjusted manually:
+----------------------------+-----------------------+--------------+
| RFC XML element | RFC XML v3 | RFC XML v2 |
+----------------------------+-----------------------+--------------+
| "front/boilerplate" | Not added by the | N/A |
| | converter | |
| "iref@primary" | N | N |
| "reference" (and all | As Raw XML | As Raw XML |
| children) | | |
| "table/preamble" | Deprecated | N |
| "table/postamble" | Deprecated | N |
| "artwork@width" | Only on images | Only on |
| | | images |
| "artwork@height" | Only on images | Only on |
| | | images |
+----------------------------+-----------------------+--------------+
19. Authoring
To author an Asciidoctor RFC document, you should familiarise
yourself with the Asciidoctor specification [13]. The converter Ruby
gem source code distribution also has samples of individual RFC XML
features [14], in v2 and v3, and examples of self-standing
Asciidoctor RFC XML documents [15], along with their RFC XML
renderings. (This includes round-tripped RFC XML documents.)
In addition, you can clone the sample "rfc-in-asciidoc-template"
repository as a template, and populate it for your AsciiDoc RFCs and
Internet-Drafts:
$ git clone https://github.com/riboseinc/rfc-in-asciidoc-template
Converting your AsciiDoc to RFC XML is a simple as installing
asciidoctor (see <http://asciidoctor.org/#installation>) and the
"asciidoctor-rfc" gem in Ruby, then running the asciidoctor
executable on the document, specifying the asciidoctor-rfc gem as a
library:
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$ git clone https://github.com/riboseinc/asciidoctor-rfc.git
$ cd asciidoctor-rfc
$ bundle install
$ gem build asciidoctor-rfc.gemspec
$ gem install asciidoctor-rfc
$ asciidoctor -b rfc3 -r 'asciidoctor-rfc' a.adoc # RFC XML v3 output
$ asciidoctor -b rfc2 -r 'asciidoctor-rfc' a.adoc # RFC XML v2 output
As you author Asciidoctor content, you should iterate through running
the Asciidoctor conversion frequently, to ensure that you are still
generating valid XML through your markup. The converter makes an
effort to ensure that its XML output is valid, and it issues warnings
about likely issues; it also validates its own XML output against the
Asciidoctor schema, and reports errors in the XML output in the
following format:
V3 RELAXNG Validation: 12:0: ERROR: Invalid attribute
sortRefs for element rfc
Note that validation against the RELAXNG RFC XML schema includes
confirming the referential integrity of all cross-references in the
document.
It may be necessary to intervene in the XML output generated by the
converter, either because the block model of Asciidoctor does not
conform with the intended RFC XML (e.g. lists embedded in
paragraphs), or because RFC XML features are required that are not
supported within Asciidoctor.
20. Security Considerations
o Ensure your AsciiRFC generator comes from a geniune and
trustworthy source. This protects your own machine and also
prevents injection of malicious content in your document.
o An AsciiRFC generator may cause errors in textual rendering or
link generation that may lead to security issues.
o Creating cross-references (and also bibliographic references) to
external documents may pose risks since the external document's
location may become controlled by a malicious party.
21. IANA Considerations
This document does not require any action by IANA.
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22. Examples
22.1. Example 1
TODO.
23. References
23.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC7749] Reschke, J., "The "xml2rfc" Version 2 Vocabulary",
RFC 7749, DOI 10.17487/RFC7749, February 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7749>.
[RFC7991] Hoffman, P., "The "xml2rfc" Version 3 Vocabulary",
RFC 7991, DOI 10.17487/RFC7991, December 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7991>.
23.2. Informative References
[RFC5385] Touch, J., "Version 2.0 Microsoft Word Template for
Creating Internet Drafts and RFCs", RFC 5385,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5385, February 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5385>.
[RFC7328] Gieben, R., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs Using Pandoc and a Bit
of XML", RFC 7328, DOI 10.17487/RFC7328, August 2014,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7328>.
[RFC7763] Leonard, S., "The text/markdown Media Type", RFC 7763,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7763, March 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7763>.
[RFC7764] Leonard, S., "Guidance on Markdown: Design Philosophies,
Stability Strategies, and Select Registrations", RFC 7764,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7764, March 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7764>.
[RFC7990] Flanagan, H., "RFC Format Framework", RFC 7990,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7990, December 2016,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7990>.
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23.3. URIs
[1] https://github.com/miekg/mmark
[2] https://github.com/cabo/kramdown-rfc2629
[3] https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[4] http://asciidoctor.org
[5] http://asciidoctor.org/docs/user-manual/#compared-to-markdown
[6] http://asciidoctor.org/docs/user-manual/#compared-to-markdown
[7] http://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/asciimath.html
[8] http://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/tex.html
[9] https://www.mathjax.org
[10] http://asciidoctor.org/docs/user-manual/#complex-list-content
[11] http://asciidoctor.org/docs/user-manual/#include-directive
[12] https://github.com/riboseinc/asciidoctor-bibliography
[13] http://asciidoctor.org/docs/user-manual
[14] https://github.com/riboseinc/asciidoctor-
rfc/tree/master/spec/asciidoctor/rfc
[15] https://github.com/riboseinc/asciidoctor-rfc/tree/master/spec/
examples
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the following persons for their
valuable advice and input.
o TODO.
Authors' Addresses
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Ronald Henry Tse
Ribose
Suite 1111, 1 Pedder Street
Central, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Email: ronald.tse@ribose.com
URI: https://www.ribose.com
Nick Nicholas
Ribose
Australia
Email: nick.nicholas@ribose.com
URI: https://www.ribose.com
Paolo Brasolin
Ribose
Suite 1111, 1 Pedder Street
Central, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Email: jeffrey.lau@ribose.com
URI: https://www.ribose.com
Paolo Brasolin
Ribose
Italy
Email: paolo.brasolin@ribose.com
URI: https://www.ribose.com
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