Internet RFC/STD/FYI/BCP Archives

RFC-EDITOR/RFC-ASCII-BEFORE-POSTSCRIPT

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It is now the policy of the RFC Editor to publish the ASCII form of an
RFC first.  If the author wishes to subsequently submit a postscript
version of the document that matches the ASCII version, that may be
done.  The RFC Editor will post the postscript version in the master
RFC repository and alert the primary repositories to the existence of
the postscript version.

It must be remembered that the ASCII version is the official version,
and that a postscript version is a secondary version.

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Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 18:00:51 -0700
From: postel (Jon Postel)
To: iab, iesg
Subject: Handling PostScript RFCs
Cc: rfc-editor

Hi.

Up to now the RFC-Editor has attempted to work with the authors of RFCs to
have the ascii text version and the postscript version of an RFC ready
and announced at the same time (when there is a postscript version).  This 
often leads to substantial delays.

The RFC-Editor is about to change this practice.  Since the ascii text
version of the RFC is the official version, and the postscript version is
provided only for readability, the RFC Editor will take only the ascii
text version initially and process it through to publication.  If the RFC
author then wishes to submit a postscript version that matches the ascii 
text version, the postscript version will be added to the RFC repositories,
and announced.  The RFC Editor will judge if a match is close enough.

This would mean that the official version of the RFC will get processed and
published faster.  This would also mean that some variable time would elapse
(depending both on the author of the RFC and the RFC Editor) between the
publication of the official ascii text version and the publication of the 
pretty unofficial postscript version.

--jon.

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