RFC 1543 (rfc1543) - Page 2 of 16
Instructions to RFC Authors
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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
Postel