Handling Long Lines in Content of Internet-Drafts and RFCs
RFC 8792
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) K. Watsen
Request for Comments: 8792 Watsen Networks
Category: Informational E. Auerswald
ISSN: 2070-1721 Individual Contributor
A. Farrel
Old Dog Consulting
Q. Wu
Huawei Technologies
June 2020
Handling Long Lines in Content of Internet-Drafts and RFCs
Abstract
This document defines two strategies for handling long lines in
width-bounded text content. One strategy, called the "single
backslash" strategy, is based on the historical use of a single
backslash ('\') character to indicate where line-folding has
occurred, with the continuation occurring with the first character
that is not a space character (' ') on the next line. The second
strategy, called the "double backslash" strategy, extends the first
strategy by adding a second backslash character to identify where the
continuation begins and is thereby able to handle cases not supported
by the first strategy. Both strategies use a self-describing header
enabling automated reconstitution of the original content.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8792.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2020 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
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Applicability Statement
3. Requirements Language
4. Goals
4.1. Automated Folding of Long Lines in Text Content
4.2. Automated Reconstitution of the Original Text Content
5. Limitations
5.1. Not Recommended for Graphical Artwork
5.2. Doesn't Work as Well as Format-Specific Options
6. Two Folding Strategies
6.1. Comparison
6.2. Recommendation
7. The Single Backslash Strategy ('\')
7.1. Folded Structure
7.1.1. Header
7.1.2. Body
7.2. Algorithm
7.2.1. Folding
7.2.2. Unfolding
8. The Double Backslash Strategy ('\\')
8.1. Folded Structure
8.1.1. Header
8.1.2. Body
8.2. Algorithm
8.2.1. Folding
8.2.2. Unfolding
9. Examples
9.1. Example Showing Boundary Conditions
9.1.1. Using '\'
9.1.2. Using '\\'
9.2. Example Showing Multiple Wraps of a Single Line
9.2.1. Using '\'
9.2.2. Using '\\'
9.3. Example Showing "Smart" Folding
9.3.1. Using '\'
9.3.2. Using '\\'
9.4. Example Showing "Forced" Folding
9.4.1. Using '\'
9.4.2. Using '\\'
10. Security Considerations
11. IANA Considerations
12. References
12.1. Normative References
12.2. Informative References
Appendix A. Bash Shell Script: rfcfold
Acknowledgements
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
[RFC7994] sets out the requirements for plain-text RFCs and states
that each line of an RFC (and hence of an Internet-Draft) must be
limited to 72 characters followed by the character sequence that
denotes an end-of-line (EOL).
Internet-Drafts and RFCs often include example text or code
fragments. Many times, the example text or code exceeds the
72-character line-length limit. The 'xml2rfc' utility [xml2rfc], at
the time of this document's publication, does not attempt to wrap the
content of such inclusions, simply issuing a warning whenever lines
exceed 69 characters. Historically, there has been no convention
recommended by the RFC Editor in place for how to handle long lines
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