



RFC Beautification Working Group                               R. Gieben
Internet-Draft                                                    Google
Intended status: Informational                           January 1, 2013
Expires: July 5, 2013


           Writing I-Ds and RFCs using Pandoc and xml2rfc 2.x
                  draft-gieben-writing-rfcs-pandoc-02

Abstract

   This memo presents a technique for using Pandoc syntax as a source
   format for documents in the Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) and Request for
   Comments (RFC) series.

   This version is adapted to work with "xml2rfc" version 2.x.

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 http://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 July 5, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 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 (http://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 Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction
   2.  Pandoc to RFC
     2.1.  Dependencies
   3.  Starting a new project
   4.  Supported Features
   5.  Unsupported Features
   6.  Acknowledgements
   7.  Pandoc Constructs
     7.1.  Paragraph
     7.2.  Section
     7.3.  List Styles
       7.3.1.  Symbol
       7.3.2.  Number
       7.3.3.  Empty
       7.3.4.  Roman
       7.3.5.  Letter
       7.3.6.  Hanging
     7.4.  Figure/Artwork
       7.4.1.  References
     7.5.  Block Quote
     7.6.  References
       7.6.1.  External
       7.6.2.  Internal
     7.7.  Spanx Styles
     7.8.  Tables
       7.8.1.  References
     7.9.  Indexes
   8.  Usage guidelines
     8.1.  Working with multiple files
     8.2.  Setting the title
     8.3.  Uploading the XML/txt
     8.4.  VIM syntax highlighting
   9.  Security Considerations
   10. IANA Considerations
   11. References
     11.1.  Informative References
     11.2.  Normative References
   Appendix A.  Tests
     A.1.  A Very Long Title Considerations With Regards to the
            Already Deployed Routing Policy
       A.1.1.  S/MIME encrypted and signed over a simple message,
               Injected Headers with hcp_minimal (+ Legacy Display)
     A.2.  Markup in heading
     A.3.  Blockquote
     A.4.  Verbatim code blocks
     A.5.  Reference Tests
     A.6.  Spanx Tests
     A.7.  List Tests
     A.8.  Table Tests
     A.9.  Numbered examples
     A.10. Figure tests
     A.11. Verse tests
   Index
   Author's Address

1.  Introduction

   This document presents a technique for using Pandoc syntax as a
   source format for documents in the Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) and Request
   for Comments (RFC) series.

   This version is adapted to work with xml2rfc version 2.x.

   Pandoc is an "almost plain text" format and therefor particularly
   well suited for editing RFC-like documents.

      Note: this document is typeset in Pandoc and does not render
      completely correct when reading it on github.

2.  Pandoc to RFC

      Pandoc2rfc -- designed to do the right thing, until it doesn't.

   When writing [RFC4641] we directly wrote the XML.  Needless to say it
   was tedious even thought the XML of xml2rfc (http://xml.resource.org/
   experimental) is very "light".  The latest version of xml2rfc version
   2 can be found here (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xml2rfc/).

   During the last few years people have been developing markup
   languages that are very easy to remember and type.  These languages
   have become known as almost plain text-markup languages.  One of the
   first was the Markdown (http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)
   syntax.  One that was developed later and incorporates Markdown and a
   number of extensions is Pandoc (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/).
   The power of Pandoc also comes from the fact that it can be
   translated to numerous output formats, including, but not limited to:
   HTML, (plain) Markdown and docbook XML.

   So using Pandoc for writing RFCs seems like a sane choice.  As
   xml2rfc uses XML, the easiest way would be to create docbook XML and
   transform that using XSLT.  Pandoc2rfc does just that.  The
   conversions are, in some way amusing, as we start off with (almost)
   plain text, use elaborate XML and end up with plain text again.

   +-------------------+   pandoc   +---------+
   | ALMOST PLAIN TEXT |   ------>  | DOCBOOK |
   +-------------------+            +---------+
                 |                       |
   non-existent  |                       | xsltproc
     faster way  |                       |
                 v                       v
         +------------+    xml2rfc  +---------+
         | PLAIN TEXT |  <--------  | XML2RFC |
         +------------+             +---------+

                  Figure 1: Attempt to justify Pandoc2rfc.

   The XML generated (the output after the xsltproc step in Figure 1) is
   suitable for inclusion in either the middle or back section of an
   RFC.  The simplest way is to create a template XML file and include
   the appropriate XML:

   <?xml version='1.0' ?>
   <!DOCTYPE rfc SYSTEM 'rfc2629.dtd' [
   <!ENTITY pandocMiddle PUBLIC '' 'middle.xml'>
   <!ENTITY pandocBack   PUBLIC '' 'back.xml'>
   ]>

   <rfc ipr='trust200902' docName='draft-gieben-pandoc-rfcs-02'>
    <front>
       <title>Writing I-Ds and RFCs using Pandoc v2</title>
   </front>

   <middle>
       &pandocMiddle;
   </middle>

   <back>
       &pandocBack;
   </back>

   </rfc>

                     Figure 2: A minimal template.xml.

   See the Makefile for an example of this.  In this case you need to
   edit 3 documents:

   1.  middle.pdc - contains the main body of text;

   2.  back.pdc - holds appendices and references;

   3.  template.xml (probably a fairly static file).

   The draft (draft.txt) you are reading now, is automatically created
   when you call make.  The homepage of Pandoc2rfc is this github
   repository (https://github.com/miekg/pandoc2rfc).

2.1.  Dependencies

   It needs xsltproc and pandoc to be installed.  See the Pandoc user
   manual for the details (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html)
   on how to type in Pandoc style.  And of course xml2rfc version two.

   When using Pandoc2rfc consider adding the following sentence to an
   Acknowledgements section:

    This document was produced using the Pandoc2rfc tool.

3.  Starting a new project

   When starting a new project with pandoc2rfc you'll need to copy the
   following files:

   *  Makefile

   *  transform.xslt

   *  And the above mentioned files:

      -  middle.pdc

      -  back.pdc

      -  template.xml

   After that you can start editing.

4.  Supported Features

   *  Sections with an anchor and title attributes (Section 7.2);

   *  Lists

      -  style=symbols (Section 7.3.1);

      -  style=numbers (Section 7.3.2);

      -  style=empty (Section 7.3.3);

      -  style=format %i, use roman lowercase numerals, (Section 7.3.4);

      -  style=format (%d), use roman uppercase numerals
         (Section 7.3.4);

      -  style=letters (lower- and uppercase, Section 7.3.5);

      -  style=hanging (Section 7.3.6);

   *  Figure/artwork with a title (Section 7.4);

   *  Block quote this is converted to <list style="empty"> paragraph
      (Section 7.5);

   *  References

      -  external (eref) (Section 7.6.1);

      -  internal (xref) (Section 7.6.2), you can refer to:

         o  section (handled by Pandoc, see Section 7.6));

         o  figures (handled by XSLT, see Section 7.4.1);

         o  tables (handled by XSLT, see Section 7.8.1).

   *  Citations, by using internal references;

   *  Spanx style=verb, style=emph and style=strong (Section 7.7);

   *  Tables with an anchor and title (Section 7.8);

   *  Indexes, by using footnotes (Section 7.9).

5.  Unsupported Features

   *  Lists inside a table (xml2rfc doesn't handle this);

   *  Pandoc markup in the caption for figures/artwork.  Pandoc markup
      for table captions _is_ supported;

   *  crefs: for comments (no input syntax available), use HTML
      comments: <!-- ... -->;

6.  Acknowledgements

   The following people have helped to make Pandoc2rfc what it is today:
   Benno Overeinder, Erlend Hamnaberg, Matthijs Mekking, Trygve
   Laugstoel.

   This document was prepared using Pandoc2rfc.

7.  Pandoc Constructs

   So, what syntax do you need to use to get the correct output?  Well,
   it is _just_ Pandoc.  The best introduction to the Pandoc style is
   given in this README from Pandoc itself
   (http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html).

   For convenience we list the most important ones in the following
   sections.

7.1.  Paragraph

   Paragraphs are separated with an empty line.

7.2.  Section

   Just use the normal sectioning commands available in Pandoc, for
   instance:

   # Section1 One
   Bla

   Converts to: <section title="Section1 One" anchor="section1-one"> If
   you have another section that is also named "Section1 One", that
   anchor will be called "section1-one-1", but _only_ when the sections
   are in the _same_ source file!

   Referencing the section is done with see [](#section1-one), as in see
   Section 7.2.

7.3.  List Styles

   A good number of styles are supported.

7.3.1.  Symbol

   A symbol list.

   * Item one;
   * Item two.

   Converts to <list style="symbol">:

   *  Item one;

   *  Item two.

7.3.2.  Number

   A numbered list.

   1. Item one;
   1. Item two.

   Converts to <list style="numbers">:

   1.  Item one;

   2.  Item two.

7.3.3.  Empty

   Using the default list markers from Pandoc:

   A list using the default list markers.

   #. Item one;
   #. Item two.

   Converts to <list style="empty">:

      Item one;

      Item two.

7.3.4.  Roman

   Use the supported Pandoc syntax:

   ii. Item one;
   ii. Item two.

   Converts to <list style="format %i.">:

   i.   Item one;

   ii.  Item two.

   If you use uppercase Roman numerals, they convert to a different
   style:

   II. Item one;
   II. Item two.

   Yields <list style="format (%d) ">:

   (1)  Item one;

   (2)  Item two.

7.3.5.  Letter

   A numbered list.

   a.  Item one;
   b.  Item two.

   Converts to <list style="letters">:

   a.  Item one;

   b.  Item two.

   Uppercasing the letters works too (note two spaces after the letter.

   A.  Item one;
   B.  Item two.

   Becomes:

   A.  Item one;

   B.  Item two.

7.3.6.  Hanging

   This is more like a description list, so we need to use:

   First item that needs clarification:

   :   Explanation one
   More stuff, because item is difficult to explain.
   * item1
   * item2

   Second item that needs clarification:

   :   Explanation two

   Converts to: <list style="hanging"> and <t hangText="First item
   that...">

   If you want a newline after the hangTexts, search for the string
   OPTION in transform.xsl and uncomment it.

7.4.  Figure/Artwork

   Indent the paragraph with 4 spaces.

   Like this

   Converts to: <figure><artwork> ...  Note that xml2rfc supports a
   caption with <artwork>.  Pandoc does not support this, but Pandoc2rfc
   does.  If you add a @Figure: some text as the last line, the artwork
   gets a title attribute with the text after @Figure:. It will also be
   possible to reference the artwork.  If a caption is supplied the
   artwork will be centered.  If a caption is needed but the figure
   should not be centered use @figure:\.

7.4.1.  References

   The reference anchor attribute will be: fig: + first 10 (normalized)
   characters from the caption.  Where normalized means:

   *  Take the first 10 characters of the caption (i.e. this is the text
      _after_ the string @Figure:);

   *  Spaces and single quotes (') are translated to a minus -;

   *  Uppercase letters translated to lowercase.

   So the first artwork with a caption will get fig:a-minimal- as a
   reference.  See for instance Figure 2.

   This anchoring is completely handled from within the xslt.  Note that
   duplicate anchors are an XML validation error which will make xml2rfc
   fail.

7.5.  Block Quote

   Any paragraph like:

   > quoted text

   Converts to: <t><list style="empty"> ...  paragraph, making it
   indented.

7.6.  References

7.6.1.  External

   Any reference like:

   [Click here](URI)

   Converts to: <ulink target="URI">Click here ...

7.6.2.  Internal

   Any reference like:

   [Click here](#localid)

   Converts to: <link target="localid">Click here ...

   For referring to RFCs (for which you manually need add the reference
   source in the template, with an external XML entity), you can just
   use:

   [](#RFC2119)

   And it does the right thing.  Referencing sections is done with:

   See [](#pandoc-constructs)

   The word 'Section' is inserted automatically: ... see Section 7 ...
   For referencing figures/artworks see Section 7.4.  For referencing
   tables see Section 7.8.

7.7.  Spanx Styles

   The verb style can be selected with back-tics: `text` Converts to:
   <spanx style="verb"> ...

   And the emphasis style with asterisks: *text* or underscores: _text_
   Converts to: <spanx style="emph"> ...

   And the emphasis style with double asterisks: **text** Converts to:
   <spanx style="strong"> ...

7.8.  Tables

   A table can be entered as:

     Right     Left     Center     Default
     -------   ------ ----------   -------
          12     12        12        12
         123     123       123       123
           1     1         1         1

     Table: A caption describing the table.

      Figure 3: A caption describing the figure describing the table.

   Is translated to <texttable> element in xml2rfc.  You can choose
   multiple styles as input, but they all are converted to the same
   style (plain <texttable>) table in xml2rfc.  The column alignment is
   copied over to the generated XML.

7.8.1.  References

   The caption is _always_ translated to a title attribute.  If a table
   has a caption, it will _also_ get a reference.  The reference anchor
   attribute will be: tab- + first 10 (normalized) characters from the
   caption.  Where normalized means:

   *  Take the first 10 characters of the caption (i.e. this is the text
      _after_ the string Table:);

   *  Spaces and single quotes (') are translated to a minus -;

   *  Uppercase letters translated to lowercase.

   So the first table with a caption will get tab-a-caption- for
   reference use.  See for instance

   This anchoring is completely handled from within the xslt.  Note that
   duplicate anchors are an XML validation error which will make xml2rfc
   fail.

7.9.  Indexes

   The footnote syntax of Pandoc is slightly abused to support an index.
   Footnotes are entered in two steps, you have a marker in the text,
   and later you give actual footnote text.  Like this:

   [^1]

   [^1]: footnote text

   We re-use this syntax for the <iref> tag.  The above text translates
   to:

   <iref item="footnote text"/>

   Sub items are also supported.  Use an exclamation mark (!) to
   separate them:

   [^1]: item!sub item

8.  Usage guidelines

8.1.  Working with multiple files

   As an author you will probably break up a draft in multiple files,
   each dealing with a subject or section.  When doing so sections with
   the same title will clash with each other.  Pandoc can deal with this
   situation, but only if the different sections are in the _same_ file
   or processed in the same Pandoc run.  Concatenating the different
   section files before processing them is a solution to this problem.
   You can, for instance, amend the Makefile and add something like
   this:

   allsections.pdc: section.pdc.1 section.pdc.2 section.pdc.3
           cat $@ > allsections.pdc

   And then process allsection.pdc in the normal way.

8.2.  Setting the title

   If you use double quotes in the documents title in the docName
   attribute, like:

   <rfc ipr="trust200902" docName="draft-gieben-writing-rfcs-pandoc-02">

   The Makefile will pick this up automatically and make a symbolic
   link:

   draft-gieben-writing-rfcs-pandoc-00.txt -> draft.txt

   This makes uploading the file to the i-d tracker a bit easier.

8.3.  Uploading the XML/txt

   The draft.xml target will generate an XML file with all XML included,
   so you can upload just one file to the I-D tracker.

8.4.  VIM syntax highlighting

   If you are a VIM user you might be interested in a syntax
   highlighting file (see [VIM]) that slightly lightens up your reading
   experience while viewing a draft.txt from VIM.

9.  Security Considerations

   This document raises no security issues.

10.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no actions for IANA.

11.  References

11.1.  Informative References

   [VIM]      Gieben, R., "VIM syntax file for RFCs and I-Ds", October
              2012, <http://github.com/miekg/rfc>.

11.2.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997,
              <ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2119.txt>.

   [RFC4641]  Kolkman, O. and R. Gieben, "DNSSEC Operational Practices",
              RFC 4641, September 2006,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4641.txt>.

Appendix A.  Tests

   This appendix consists out of a few tests that should all render to
   proper xml2rfc XML.

A.1.  A Very Long Title Considerations With Regards to the Already
      Deployed Routing Policy

   Test a very long title.

A.1.1.  S/MIME encrypted and signed over a simple message, Injected
        Headers with hcp_minimal (+ Legacy Display)

   Test long title edge case

A.2.  Markup in heading

   This is discarded by xml2rfc.

A.3.  Blockquote

      This is a blockquote, how does it look?

A.4.  Verbatim code blocks

   A verbatim code block
   jkasjksajassjasjsajsajkas

A.5.  Reference Tests

   Refer to RFC 2119 [RFC2119] if you will.  Or maybe you want to
   inspect Figure 2 in Section 2 again.  Or you might want to Click here
   (http://miek.nl).

A.6.  Spanx Tests

      underscores: _underscores_

      asterisks: _asterisks_

      double asterisks: *double asterisks*

      backticks: backticks

A.7.  List Tests

   1.  First we do

   2.  And then

       *  item 1

       *  item 2

   And the other around.

   *  First we do

   *  Then

      1.  Something

      2.  Another thing

   Description lists:

   Item to explain:  It works because of herbs.

   Another item to explain:  More explaining.

      Multiple paragraphs in such a list.

   lists in description lists.

   Item to explain:  It works because of

      1.  One

      2.  Two

   Another item to explain:  More explaining

   Item to explain:  It works because of

      1.  One1

      2.  Two1

          *  Itemize list

          *  Another item

   Another item to explain again:  More explaining

   list with description lists.

   1.  More

       Item to explain:  Explanation ...

       Item to explain:  Another explanation ...

   2.  Go'bye

   Multiple paragraphs in a list.

   1.  This is the first bullet point and it needs multiple
       paragraphs...

       ... to be explained properly.

   2.  This is the next bullet.  New paragraphs should be indented with
       4 four spaces.

   3.  Another item with some artwork, indented by 8 spaces.

      Artwork

   4.  Final item.

   xml2rfc does not allow this, so the second paragraph is faked with a

   <vspace blankLines='1'>

   Ordered lists.

   1.  First item

   2.  Second item

   A lowercase roman list:

   i.   Item 1

   ii.  Item 2

   An uppercase roman list.

   (1)  Item1

   (2)  Item2

   (3)  Item 3

   And default list markers.

   Some surrounding text, to make it look better.

      First item.  Use lot of text to get a real paragraphs sense.
      First item.  Use lot of text to get a real paragraphs sense.
      First item.  Use lot of text to get a real paragraphs sense.
      First item.  Use lot of text to get a real paragraphs sense.

      Second item.  So this is the second para in your list.  Enjoy;

      Another item.

   Text at the end.

   Lowercase letters list.

   a.  First item

   b.  Second item

   Uppercase letters list.

   A.  First item

   B.  Second item


   And artwork in a description list.

   Item1:  Tell something about it.  Tell something about it.  Tell
      something about it.  Tell something about it.  Tell something
      about it.  Tell something about it.

      miek.nl.    IN  NS  a.miek.nl.
      a.miek.nl.  IN  A   192.0.2.1    ; <- this is glue

      Tell some more about it.  Tell some more about it.  Tell some more
      about it.

   Item2:  Another description

   List with a sublist with a paragraph above the sublist

   1.  First Item

   2.  Second item

   3.  Third item

       A paragraph that comes first

       a.  But what do you know

       b.  This is another list

A.8.  Table Tests

                    +=======+======+========+=========+
                    | Right | Left | Center | Default |
                    +=======+======+========+=========+
                    |    12 | 12   |   12   | 12      |
                    +-------+------+--------+---------+
                    |   123 | 123  |  123   | 123     |
                    +-------+------+--------+---------+
                    |     1 | 1    |   1    | 1       |
                    +-------+------+--------+---------+

                         Table 1: Demonstration of
                            simple table syntax.

      +==========+=========+=========+==============================+
      | Centered | Default |   Right | Left Aligned                 |
      |  Header  | Aligned | Aligned |                              |
      +==========+=========+=========+==============================+
      |  First   | row     |    12.0 | Example of a row that spans  |
      |          |         |         | multiple lines.              |
      +----------+---------+---------+------------------------------+
      |  Second  | row     |     5.0 | Here's another one.  Note    |
      |          |         |         | the blank line between rows. |
      +----------+---------+---------+------------------------------+

          Table 2: Here's the caption.  It, too, may span multiple
         lines.  This is a multiline table.  This is verbatim text.


                  +=========+=======+==================+
                  | Fruit   | Price | Advantages       |
                  +=========+=======+==================+
                  | Bananas | $1.34 | built-in wrapper |
                  +---------+-------+------------------+
                  | Oranges | $2.10 | cures scurvy     |
                  +---------+-------+------------------+

                       Table 3: Sample grid table.

   Grid tables without a caption

                  +=========+=======+==================+
                  | Fruit   | Price | Advantages       |
                  +=========+=======+==================+
                  | Bananas | $1.34 | built-in wrapper |
                  +---------+-------+------------------+
                  | Oranges | $2.10 | cures scurvy     |
                  +---------+-------+------------------+

                                 Table 4

   This table has no caption, and therefor no reference.  But you can
   refer to some of the other tables, with for instance:

   See [](#tab-here-s-the)

   Which will become "See Table 2".


   We should also be able to refer to the table numbers directly, to say
   things like 'Look at Tables 1, 2 and 3.'

A.9.  Numbered examples

   This is another example:

   1.  Another bla bla..

   as (1) shows...

A.10.  Figure tests

   This is a figure
   This is a figure
   This is a figure
   This is a figure

      Figure 4: This is the caption, with text in `typewriter`. Which
      isnt converted to a <spanx> style, because this is copied as-is.

   And how a figure that is not centered, do to using figure and not
   Figure.

   This is a figure
   This is a figure

                      Figure 5: A non centered figure.

   Test the use of @title:

   This is a figure with a title
   This is a figure with a title
   @title: and here it is: a title, don't mess it up *

A.11.  Verse tests

   This is a verse text This is another line

Index

   L T

      L

         list
            Uppercase Letters  Appendix A.7, Paragraph 28
            default markers  Appendix A.7, Paragraph 20

      T

         table
            grid  Appendix A.8, Paragraph 10
            simple  Appendix A.8, Paragraph 3

Author's Address

   R. (Miek) Gieben
   Google
   123 Buckingham Palace Road
   London
   SW1W 9SH
   United Kingdom
   Email: miek@miek.nl
   URI:   http://miek.nl/
