Hi,
I have a MIB module in AUTH48 and the following question popped up.
The MIB modules has something similar to this:
FancyString TEXTUAL-CONVENTION
-- description etc. removed with a normative reference to 3629
REFERENCE
"RFC 3629: UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646"
SYNTAX OCTET STRING
Since the content of this RFC to be normatively depends on RFC 3629, I
included RFC 3629 in the normative reference section. As RFC 4181
points out, the RFC editor has a policy that you can't have a
reference in an RFC that is not cited and they do not like to cite the
reference in the MIB module because the MIB module can be extracted
and thus there is a dangling citation. Given this, it seems I have two
options:
a) Remove RFC 3629 from the normative references. This is the easiest
solution but then any tools analyzing normative dependencies
between RFCs will likely miss a normative reference, which sounds
like a bad idea.
b) Add extra text somewhere outside the MIB module to establish a
citation to RFC 3629. This adds some verbiage but ensures that the
normative dependency gets properly recorded.
The third option, namely to try to change the RFC editor policy, I did
not consider seriously. ;-)
I checked RFC 4181 but it only has guidelines on IMPORTs. So do we
generally prefer option a) or b). If there is a clear preference,
should 4181bis be extended to handle the situation where REFERENCE
clauses refer normatively to other documents that are not cited
outside the MIB module?
/js
PS: I am bringing this question up here because I am editing a much
larger document where this issue is much more dominant and so I
want to be consistent.