Re: [Tools-discuss] New tool: bibxml2rfc

[Eric Rescorla <ekr at networkresonance.com>]

At Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:54:35 +0100,
Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 2008-03-20 16:09 Eric Rescorla said the following:
> > I've just put up a prototype version of a new tool: bibxml2rfc,
> > which is a reference tool for xml2rfc in the style of bibtex.
> > 
> > URL: https://svn.resiprocate.org/rep/ietf-drafts/ekr/bibxml2rfc
> 
> Hey!  This is written in Python!  I can read this comfortably!  :-)
> 
> > Here's the description from the internal documentation.
> 
> ...
> 
> >      When handed an XML file, bibxml2rfc tries to identify the
> >      references and construct an appropriate bibliography. The
> >      general procedure is as follows:
> 
> How to use this wasn't entirely clear to me until I read the
> bibxml2rfc-merge code.  So to use this, you add 2 external entity
> definitions to your xml2rfc source file, one for the normative and
> one for the informative reference files, and use those in their
> appropriate reference section.  This replaces the individual entity
> definitions for external bibxml* files.

Exactly.


> Then you run bibxml2rfc on the source file, which will have the
> effect of downloading needed references if not already in the cache,
> and building the two files holding references. 

Yes, though you can do these in either order.

> If you're off-line,
> references not in the local cache will be present in the generated
> files with dummy content, so you can run xml2rfc on the source file
> without being held up.

Yes, with two caveats:

1. You need to pass -i
2. It only does this for I-Ds and RFCs. Other references it doesn't
   try.

You are expected to preload the cache with non-ID non RFC references.


>  If you're on-line, new files will be added
> to the cache. 

Yep.


> Files already in the cache won't be checked for
> updates (should that optionally be done?).

Actually, I-Ds are checked for updates unless you pass in 
'-n'. RFCs aren't checked for updates on the theory that
RFCs never change. 

-Ekr
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