RFC 1543 (rfc1543) - Page 2 of 16

Instructions to RFC Authors

RFC 1543              Instructions to RFC Authors           October 1993


   topic related to computer communication may be acceptable at the
   discretion of the RFC Editor.

   Memos proposed to be RFCs may be submitted by anyone.  One large
   source of memos that become RFCs is the Internet Engineering Task
   Force (IETF).  The IETF working groups (WGs) evolve their working
   memos (known as Internet Drafts or I-Ds) until they feel they are
   ready for publication, then the memos are reviewed by the Internet
   Engineering Steering Group (IESG), and if approved sent by the IESG
   to the RFC Editor.

   RFCs are distributed online by being stored as public access files,
   and a short message is sent to the distribution list indicating the
   availability of the memo.

   The online files are copied by the interested people and printed or
   displayed at their site on their equipment.  This means that the
   format of the online files must meet the constraints of a wide
   variety of printing and display equipment.  (RFCs may also be
   returned via e-mail in response to an e-mail query, or RFCs may be
   found using information and database searching tools such as Gopher,
   Wais, WWW, or Mosaic.)

   RFCs have been traditionally published and continue to be published
   in ASCII text.

   While the primary RFCs is always an ASCII text file, secondary or
   alternative versions of RFC may be provided in PostScript.  This
   decision is motivated by the desire to include diagrams, drawings,
   and such in RFCs.  PostScript documents (on paper only, so far) are
   visually more appealing and have better readability.

   PostScript was chosen for the fancy form of RFC publication over
   other possible systems (e.g., impress, interpress, oda) because of
   the perceived wide spread availability of PostScript capable
   printers.

   However, many RFC users read the documents online and use various
   text oriented tools (e.g., emacs, grep) to search them.  Often, brief
   excerpts from RFCs are included in e-mail.  These practices are not
   yet practical with PostScript files.

   PostScript producing systems are less standard than had been assumed
   and that several of the document production systems that claim to
   produce PostScript actually produce nonstandard results.

   In the future, it may be necessary to identify a set of document
   production systems authorized for use in production of PostScript



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