Internet DRAFT - draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf
draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf
Network Working Group T. Hansen, Ed.
Internet-Draft AT&T Laboratories
Intended status: Informational L. Masinter
Expires: April 14, 2016 M. Hardy
Adobe
October 12, 2015
PDF for an RFC Series Output Document Format
draft-hansen-rfc-use-of-pdf-08
Abstract
This document discusses options and requirements for the PDF
rendering of RFCs in the RFC Series, as outlined in RFC 6949. It
also discusses the use of PDF for Internet-Drafts, and available or
needed software tools for producing and working with PDF.
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 April 14, 2016.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2015 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 Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Options and Requirements for PDF RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. "Visible" Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.1. General Visible Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.2. Page Size, Margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.3. Headers and Footers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.4. Paragraph Numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.5. Paged Content Layout Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.6. Typeface Choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.7. Hyphenation and Line Breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.8. Hyperlinks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.9. Similarity to Other Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2. "Invisible" Options and Requirements . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.1. Internal Text Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.2. Unicode Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.3. Image Processing (Artwork) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.4. Text Description of Images (Alt-Text) . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.5. Metadata Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.6. Document Structure Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.7. Embedded Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3. Digital Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3. Choosing PDF versions and Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.1. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Appendix A. History and Current Use of PDF with RFCs and
Internet-Drafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
A.1. RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
A.2. Internet-Drafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Appendix B. Tooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
B.1. PDF Viewers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
B.2. Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
B.3. PDF Generation Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
B.4. Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
B.5. Other Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Appendix C. Additional Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Appendix D. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
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1. Introduction
The RFC Series is evolving, as outlined in [RFC6949]. Future
documents will use an canonical format, XML, with renderings in
various formats, including PDF.
Because PDF has a wide range of capabilities and alternatives, not
all PDFs are "equal". For example, visually similar documents could
consist of scanned or rasterized images, or include text layout
options, hyperlinks, embedded fonts, and digital signatures. (See
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format> for a
history of PDF. Also see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A> and
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/UA> for descriptions of PDF/A and
PDF/UA, respectively.)
This document explains some of the relevant options and makes
recommendations, both for the RFC series and Internet-Drafts.
The PDF format and the tools to manipulate it are not as well known
as those for the other RFC formats, at least in the IETF community.
This document discusses some of the processes for creating and using
PDFs using both open source and commercial products.
The details described in this document are expected to change based
on experience gained in implementing the RFC production center's
toolset. Revised documents will be published capturing those changes
as the toolset is completed. Other implementers must not expect
those changes to remain backwards-compatible with the details
described in this document.
NOTE: see <https://github.com/masinter/pdfrfc> for XML source,
related files, and an issue tracker for this document.
2. Options and Requirements for PDF RFCs
This section lays out options and requirements for PDFs produced by
the RFC editor for RFCs. There are two sections: "Visible" options
are related to how the PDF appears when it is viewed with a PDF
viewer. "Internal Structure" options affect the ability to process
PDFs in other ways, but do not control the way the document appears.
(Of course, a viewer UI might display processing capabilities, such
as showing if a document has been digitally signed.)
In many cases, the choice of PDF requirements is heavily influenced
by the capabilities of available tools to create PDFs. Most of the
discussion of tooling is to be found in Appendix B.
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2.1. "Visible" Requirements
PDF supports rich visible layout of fixed-sized pages.
2.1.1. General Visible Requirements
For a consistent "look" of RFC and good style, the PDFs produced by
the RFC editor should have a clear, consistent, identifiable and
easy-to-read style. They should print well on the widest range of
printers, and look good on displays of varying resolution.
2.1.2. Page Size, Margins
PDF files are laid out for a particular size of page and margins.
There are two paper sizes in common use: "US Letter" (8.5 x 11
inches, 216x279 mm, in popular use in North America) and "A4"
(210x297 mm, 8.27x11.7 inches, standard for the rest of the world).
Usually PDF printing software is used in a "shrink to fit" mode where
the printing is adjusted to fit the paper in the printer. There is
some controversy, but the argument that A4 is an international
standard is compelling.
Recommendation: The Internet-Draft and RFC processors should produce
A4 size by default. However, the margins and header positioning will
need to be chosen to look good on both paper sizes using common
printing methods.
2.1.3. Headers and Footers
Page headers and footers are part of the page layout. There are a
variety of options. Note that page headers and footers in PDF can be
typeset in a way that the entire (longer) title might fit.
Recommendation: Page headers and footers should contain similar
information as the headings in the current text versions of
documents, including page numbers, title, author, working group.
However, the page headers and footers should be typeset in a way so
as to be inobtrusive. The page headers and footers should be placed
into the PDF in a way not to interfere with screen readers.
2.1.4. Paragraph Numbering
One common feature of the Internet-draft output formats are optional
visible paragraph numbers, to aid in discussions. In the PDF and
thus printed rendition, it is possible to make paragraph numbers
unobtrusive, and even to impinge on the margins.
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Recommendation: When the XML "editing=yes" option has been chosen,
show paragraph numbers in the right margin, typeset in a way so as to
be inobtrusive. (The right margin instead of the left margin
prevents the paragraph numbers from being confused with the section
numbers.) If possible, the paragraph numbers should be coded in a
way that they do not not interfere with screen readers.
2.1.5. Paged Content Layout Quality
The process of creating a paged document from running text typically
involves insuring that related material is present on the same page
together, and that artifacts of pagination don't interfere with easy
reading of the document. Typical high-quality layout processors do
several things:
Widow and Orphan Management: Widows and orphans
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans>) should be
avoided automatically (unless the entire paragraph is only one
line). Insure that a page break does not occur after the first
line of a paragraph (orphans), if necessary, using slightly longer
page sizes. Similarly, insure that a page break does not occur
before the last line of a paragraph (widows).
Keep Section Heading Contiguous: Do not page break immediately after
a section heading. If there isn't room on a page for the first
(two) lines of a section after the section heading, page break
before the heading.
Avoid Splitting Artwork: Figures should not be split from figure
titles. If possible, keep the figure on the same page as the
(first) mention of the figure.
Headers for Long Tables after Page Breaks: Another common option in
producing paginated documents is to include the column headings of
a table if the table cannot be displayed on a single page.
Similarly, tables should not be split from the table titles.
keepWithNext and keepWithPrevious: The XML attributes of
"keepWithNext" and "keepWithPrevious" should be followed whenever
possible.
Whitespace Preservation: The XML entities such as NBSP and NBHYPHEN
should be followed as directed whenever possible.
Layout engines differ in the quality of the algorithms used to
automate these processes. In some cases, the automated processes
require some manual assistance to insure, for example, that a text
line intended as a heading is "kept" with the text it is heading for.
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Recommendation: Choose a layout engine so that manual intervention is
minimized, and that widow and orphan processing, heading and title
contiguation are automatic.
2.1.6. Typeface Choices
A PDF may refer to a font by name, or it may use an embedded font.
When a font is not embedded, a PDF viewer will attempt to locate a
locally installed font of the same name. If it can not find an exact
match, it will find a "close match". If a close match is not
available, it will fall back to something implementation dependent
and usually undesirable.
In addition, the PDF/A standards mandate the embedding of fonts.
Preferably, the software generating the files would produce PDF/
A-conforming files directly, thus ensuring that all glyphs include
Unicode mappings and embedded fonts from the outset.
If the HTML version of the document is being visually mimicked, the
font(s) chosen should have both variable width and constant width
components, as well as bold and italic representations.
The typefaces used by Internet-Drafts and by RFCs need not be
identical.
Few fonts have glyphs for the entire repertoire of Unicode
characters; for this purpose, the PDF generation tool may need a set
of fonts and a way of choosing them. The RFC Editor is defining
where Unicode characters may be used within
RFCs.[I-D.flanagan-nonascii]
Typefaces are typically licensed and, in many cases, there is a fee
for use by PDF creation tools; however, not for display or print of
the embedded fonts.
Recommendations:
o Recommendation: for consistent viewing, all fonts should be
embedded. The fonts used must be available for use by the IETF
community.
o The choice of type faces with respect to serif, sans serif,
monospace, etc., should follow the recommendations for HTML and
CSS rendering [I-D.hildebrand-html-rfc] and
[I-D.flanagan-rfc-css].
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o The range of Unicode characters allowed in the XML source for
Internet-Drafts and RFCs may be bounded by the availability of
embeddable fonts with appropriate glyphs [I-D.flanagan-nonascii].
2.1.7. Hyphenation and Line Breaks
Typically, when doing page layout of running text, especially with
narrow page width and long words, layout processors of English text
often have the option of hyphenating words, or using existing hyphens
as a place to introduce word breaks. However, line breaks mid-word
where the "word" is actually technically a sequence of characters
representing a protocol element or protocol sequence is actively
harmful.
Recommendation: avoid introducing hyphenated line breaks mid-word
into the visual display, consistent with requirements for plain text
and HTML.
2.1.8. Hyperlinks
PDF supports hyperlinks both to sections of the same document and to
other documents.
The conversion to PDF can generate:
o hyperlinks within the document
o hyperlinks to other RFCs and Internet-Drafts
o hyperlinks to external locations
o hyperlinks within a table of contents
o hyperlinks within an index
One question that must be answered is where should hyperlinks to RFCs
point? To the info page for the RFC? To the PDF version of the RFC?
Similar questions need to be answered on references to Internet-
Drafts: Where should hyperlinks to Internet-Drafts point? To the
datatracker entry? To the tools entry? To a PDF version of the
Internet-Draft?
Recommendations:
o All hyperlinks available in the HTML rendition of the RFC should
also be visible and active in the PDF produced. This includes
both internal hyperlinks and hyperlinks to external resources.
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o The table of contents, including page numbers, are useful when
printed. These should also be hyperlinked to their respective
sections.
o Hyperlinks to RFCs from the references section should point to the
RFC "info" page, which then links to the various formats
available.
o Hyperlinks to Internet-Drafts from the references section should
point to the datatracker entry page for the draft, which then
links to the various formats available.
2.1.9. Similarity to Other Outputs
There is some advantage to having the PDF files look like the text or
HTML renderings of the same document. There are several options even
so. The PDF
1. could look like the text version of the document, or
2. could look like the text version of the document but with
pictures rendered as pictures instead of using their ASCII-art
equivalent, or
3. could look like the HTML version.
Recommendation: the PDF rendition should look like the HTML
rendition, at least in spirit. Some differences from the HTML
rendition would include different typeface and size (chosen for
printing), page numbers in the table of contents and index, and the
use of page headers and footers.
Most of the choices used for the [I-D.hildebrand-html-rfc] rendering
and [I-D.flanagan-rfc-css] are thus applicable. See those document
for specifics on the rendering of the specific XML elements. Some
notes are:
Every place in the document that would receive an HTML ID would be
given an identical PDF named destination. In addition, a named
destination will be created for each page with the form "pg-#", as
in "pg-35".
No pilcrows are generated or made visible.
The table of contents (generated if the XML's <rfc> element's
tocInclude attribute has the value "true") will have the section
number linked to that section named destination, but will also
include a page number that is linked to the page named
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destination. The section title and the page number will be
separated by a visually-appropriate separator and the page numbers
will be aligned with each other.
The index (generated if the XML's <rfc> element's indexInclude
attribute has the value "true") will have the section number
linked to that section named destination, but will also include a
page number that is linked to the page named destination.
The running header in one line (on page 2 and all subsequent
pages) has the RFC number on the left (RFC NNNN), the (possibly
shortened form) title centered, and the date (Month Year) on the
right. The text is rendered in a way that is visually non-
intrusive.
The running footer in one line (on all pages) has the author's
last name on the left, category centered, and the page number on
the right ([Page N]). The text is rendered in a way that is
visually non-intrusive.
2.2. "Invisible" Options and Requirements
PDF offers a number of features which improve the utility of PDF
files in a variety of workflows, at the cost of extra effort in the
xml2rfc conversion process; the tradeoffs may be different for the
RFC editor production of RFCs and for Internet-Drafts.
2.2.1. Internal Text Representation
The contents of a PDF file can be represented in many ways. The PDF
file could be generated:
o as an image of the visual representation, such as a JPEG image of
the word "IETF". That is, there might be no internal
representation of letters, words or paragraphs at all.
o placing individual characters in position on the page, such as
saying "put an 'F' here", then "put an 'T' before it", then "put
an 'E' before that", then "put an 'I' before that" to render the
word "IETF". That is, there might be no internal representation
of words or paragraphs at all.
o placing words in position on the page, such as keeping the word
"IETF" would be kept together. That is, there might be no
internal representation of paragraphs at all.
o insuring that the running order of text in the content stream
matches the logical reading order. That is, a sentence sentence
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such as 'The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) supports the
Internet.' would be kept together as a sentence, and multiple
sentences within a paragraph would be kept together.
All of these end up with essentially the same visual representation
of the output. However, each level has tradeoffs for auxiliary uses,
such as searching or indexing, commenting and annotation, and
accessibility (text-to-speech). Keeping the running order of text in
the content stream in the proper order supports all of these auxiliar
uses.
In addition, the "role map" feature of PDF
(<http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/X/pro/using/
WS58a04a822e3e50102bd615109794195ff-7cd8.w.html>) would additionally
allow for the mapping of the logical tags found in the original XML
into tags in the PDF.
Recommendations:
o Text in content streams should follow the XML document's logical
order (in the order of tags) to the extent possible. This will
provide optimal reuse by software that does not understand Tagged
PDF. (PDF/UA requires this.)
o It might be possible to use the "role map" annotation to capture
enough of the xml2rfc source structure, to the point where it is
possible to reconstruct the XML source structure completely.
However, there is not a compelling case to do so over embedding
the original XML, as described in Section 2.2.7.
2.2.2. Unicode Support
PDF itself does not require use of Unicode. Text is represented as a
sequence of glyphs which then can be mapped to Unicode.
Recommendations:
PDF files generated must have the full text, as it appears in the
original XML.
Unicode normalization may occur.
Text within SVG for SVG images should also have Unicode mappings.
Alt-text for images should also support Unicode.
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2.2.3. Image Processing (Artwork)
The XML allows both ASCII art and SVG to be used for artwork.
Recommendations:
If both ASCII art and SVG are available for a picture, the SVG
artwork should be the preferred over the ASCII artwork.
ASCII artwork must be rendered using a monospace font.
2.2.4. Text Description of Images (Alt-Text)
Guidelines for accessibility of PDF <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-
TECHS/PDF1.html> recommend that images, formulas, and other non-text
items provide textual alternatives, using the '/Alt' Tag in PDF to
provide human-readable text that can be vocalized by text-to-speech
technology.
Recommendation: Any alt-text for artwork and figures available in the
XML source should be stored using the PDF /Alt property. Internet
draft authors and the RFC editor should insure inclusion of alt-text
for all SVG or images, within the XML source.
2.2.5. Metadata Support
Metadata encodes information about the document authors, the document
series, date created, etc. Having this metadata within the PDF file
allows it to be used by search engines, viewers and other reuse
tools. PDF supports embedded metadata in a variety of ways,
including using XMP [XMP], the Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP).
The RFC editor maintains metadata about an RFC on its info page.
Recommendation: The PDFs generated should have all of the metadata
from the XML version embedded directly as XMP metadata, including the
author, date, the document series, and a URL for where the document
can be retrieved. This information should be consistent with the RFC
editor info page at the time of publication.
2.2.6. Document Structure Support
PDF supports an "outline" feature where sections of the document are
marked; this oould be used in addition to the table of contents as a
navigation aid.
The section structure of an RFC can be mapped into the PDF elements
for the document structure. This will allow the bookmark feature of
PDF readers to be used to quickly access sections of the document.
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Recommendation: The section structure of an RFC should be mapped into
the PDF elements for the document structure. This would include
section headings for the boilerplate sections such as the Abstract,
Status of the Document, Table of Contents, and Author Addresses, plus
the obvious section headings that are normally included in the
Table of Contents. If possible, this should be done in a way that
the same fragment identifiers for the HTML version of the RFC will
work for the PDF version.
2.2.7. Embedded Files
PDF has the capability of including other files; the files may be
labeled both by a media type and a role, the AFRelationship key
[PDFA3]. In this way, the PDF file acts also as a container.
Embedded content may be compressed.
Many PDF viewers support the ability to view and extract embedded
files, although this capability is not universal.
Embedding content in the PDF file allows the PDF to act as a complete
package, which can be transformed, archived, and digitally signed.
Useful possibilities:
Embed the source XML input file itself within the PDF. If the
source SVG and images for illustrations are also embedded, this
would make the PDF file totally self-referential.
Embed directly extractable components that are useful for
independent processing, including ABNF, MIBs, source code for
reference implementations. This capability might be supported
through other mechanisms from the XML source files, but could also
be supported within the PDF.
Finding, extracting and embedding other components may require
additional markup to clearly identify them, and additional review
to insure the correctness of embedded files that are not visible.
Recommendations:
Embed the XML source and all illustrations, for RFCs, as a
standard feature for xml2rfc's PDF output.
If possible, make this a standard feature for Internet-Drafts as
well.
Named <sourcecode> entries should be embedded.
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Embedded bitmap images (SVG sources, JPEGs, PNGs, etc) should be
embedded.
2.3. Digital Signatures
PDF has supported digital signatures since PDF 1.2. There are
multiple methods for signing PDF files. The signature is intended to
apply not only to the bits in the file (that they haven't been
modified) but also to lock down the visual presentation as well.
Normally, the authenticity of RFC files is not an issue, since the
RFC editor maintains a repository of all RFCs which is widely
replicated. However, the RFC Editor and staff are at times called to
provide evidence that a particular RFC is the "original" and has not
been visually modified, and there may be other use cases. As
signatures also apply to embedded content, embedding the XML source
will provide a way of signing the source XML as well.
Recommendation: PDFs produced by the RFC editor should be signed with
a PDF digital signature. The management of certificates for the RFC
editor function needs further review.
Recommendation: At this time, the authors see no need for Internet-
Drafts to be signed with a PDF digital signature.
3. Choosing PDF versions and Standards
PDF has gone through several revisions, primarily for the addition of
features. PDF features have generally been added in a way that older
viewers 'fail gracefully', but even so, the older the PDF version
produced, the more legacy viewers will support that version, but the
fewer features will be enabled.
As PDF has evolved a broad set of capabilities, additional standards
for PDF files are applicable. These standards establish ground rules
that are important for specific applications. For example PDF/X was
specifically designed for Prepress digital data exchange, with
careful attention to color management and printing instructions,
while the PDF/E standard was designed for engineering documents.
Two additional standards families are important to the RFC format,
though: long-term preservation (PDF/A), and user acessibility (PDF/
UA). These then have sub-profiles (PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3), each
of which have conformance levels. These standards are then supported
by various software libraries and tools.
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It is effective and useful to use these standards to capture PDF for
RFC requirements, and they will make the PDF files useful in
workflows that expect them.
Recommendations:
Use PDF 1.7; although relatively recent, it is well supported by
widely available viewers.
For RFCs, require PDF/A-3 with conformance level "U". This
captures the archivability and long-term stability of PDF 1.7
files, mandatory Unicode mapping, and many of the requirement
features.
Use PDF/A-3 for embedding additional data (including the XML
source file) in RFCs and Internet-Drafts.
Use PDF/UA.
4. References
4.1. References
[PDF] ISO, "Portable document format -- Part 1: PDF 1.7", ISO
32000-1, 2008.
Also available free from Adobe.
[XMP] ISO, "Extensible metadata platform (XMP) specification --
Part 1: Data model, serialization and core properties",
ISO 16684-1, 2012.
Not available free, but there are a number of descriptive
resources, e.g., <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Extensible_Metadata_Platform>
[PDFA2] ISO, "Electronic document file format for long-term
preservation -- Part 2: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/A-2).",
ISO 19005-2, 2011.
[PDFA3] ISO, "Electronic document file format for long-term
preservation -- Part 3: Use of ISO 32000-1 with support
for embedded files (PDF/A-3)", ISO 19005-3, 2012.
[PDFUA] ISO, "Electronic document file format enhancement for
accessibility -- Part 1: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/UA-1)",
ISO 19005-3, 2012.
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4.2. Informative References
[RFC3778] Taft, E., Pravetz, J., Zilles, S., and L. Masinter, "The
application/pdf Media Type", RFC 3778, DOI 10.17487/
RFC3778, May 2004,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3778>.
[RFC6949] Flanagan, H. and N. Brownlee, "RFC Series Format
Requirements and Future Development", RFC 6949, DOI
10.17487/RFC6949, May 2013,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6949>.
[RFC7322] Flanagan, H. and S. Ginoza, "RFC Style Guide", RFC 7322,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7322, September 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7322>.
[I-D.flanagan-nonascii]
Flanagan, H., "The Use of Non-ASCII Characters in RFCs",
draft-flanagan-nonascii-05 (work in progress), August
2015.
[I-D.flanagan-rfc-css]
Flanagan, H., "CSS Requirements for RFCs", draft-flanagan-
rfc-css-04 (work in progress), September 2015.
[I-D.hildebrand-html-rfc]
Hildebrand, J. and P. Hoffman, "HyperText Markup Language
Request For Comments Format", draft-hildebrand-html-rfc-10
(work in progress), August 2015.
4.3. URIs
[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/
sourcesans.adobe/?source=directory
[2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/
sourceserifpro.adobe/?source=directory
[3] https://sourceforge.net/projects/
sourcecodepro.adobe/?source=drectory
[4] https://www.rosettatype.com/Skolar
[5] https://www.google.com/get/noto/
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Appendix A. History and Current Use of PDF with RFCs and Internet-
Drafts
NOTE: this section is meant as an overview to give some background.
A.1. RFCs
The RFC series has for a long time accepted Postscript renderings of
RFCs, either in addition to or instead of the text renderings of
those same RFCs. These have usually been produced when there was a
complicated figure or mathematics within the document. For example,
consider the figures and mathematics found in RFC 1119 and RFC 1142,
and compare the figures found in the text version of RFC 3550 with
those in the Postscript version. The RFC editor has provided a PDF
rendering of RFCs. Usually, this has been a print of the text file
that does not take advantage of any of the broader PDF functionality,
unless there was a Postscript version of the RFC, which would then be
used by the RFC editor to generate the PDF.
A.2. Internet-Drafts
In addition to PDFs generated and published by the RFC editor, the
IETF tools community has also long supported PDF for Internet-Drafts.
Most RFCs start with Internet-Drafts, edited by individual authors.
The Internet-Drafts submission tool at https://datatracker.ietf.org/
submit/ accepts PDF and Postscript files in addition to the
(required) text submission and (currently optional) XML. If a PDF
wasn't submitted for a particular version of an Internet-Draft, the
tools would generate one from the Postscript, HTML, or text.
Appendix B. Tooling
This section discusses tools for viewing, comparing, creating,
manipulating, transforming PDF files, including those currently in
use by the RFC editor and Internet-Drafts, as well as outlining
available PDF tools for various processes.
B.1. PDF Viewers
As with most file formats, PDF files are experienced through a reader
or viewer of PDF files, and there are numerous viewers. One partial
list of PDF viewers can be found at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_PDF_software#Viewers>.
PDF viewers vary in capabilities, and it is important to note which
PDF viewers support the features utilized in PDF RFCs and Internet-
Drafts (features such as links, digital signatures, Tagged PDF and
others mentioned in Section 2).
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A survey of the IETF community might broaden the list of viewers in
common use, but an initial list to consider include some that are
currently maintained and supported viewers and legacy systems.
Maintained viewers include:
Adobe Reader Multiple platforms. Supports all of the features on
most platforms.
Google Chrome Multiple platforms. Web browser which includes PDF
support. Rapidly moving target, open source.
PDF.js Multiple platforms. A JavaScript library to convert PDF
files into HTML5, usable as a web-based viewer that can be
included in web browsers. Used by Mozilla Firefox. Also rapidly
moving target.
Foxit Reader Multiple platforms. PDF Viewer / Reader for Desktop
computer and Mobile Devices. Recently licensed by Google, and the
code for this purpose was made open source; see <http://www.i-
programmer.info/news/136-open-source/7433-google-open-sources-pdf-
software-library.html>.
Several "legacy" viewers to consider include: Ghostview, Xpdf.
B.2. Printers
While almost all viewers also support printing of PDF files, printing
is one of the most important use cases for PDFs. Some printers have
direct PDF support.
B.3. PDF Generation Libraries
Because the xml2rfc format is a unique format, software for
converting XML source documents to the various formats will be
needed, including PDF generation.
One promising direction is suggested in
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2629xslt/
rfc2629xslt.html#output.pdf.fop>: using XSLT to generate XSL-FO which
is then processed by a formatting object processor such as Apache
FOP.
Several libraries are also available for generating PDF signatures.
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B.4. Typefaces
This section is intended to discuss available typefaces that might
satisfy requirements. Some openly available fixed-width typefaces
(without extensive Unicode support, however) include:
o Source Sans [1]
o Source Serif Pro [2]
o Source Code Pro [3]
A font that looks promising for its broad Unicode support is Skolar
[4], but it requires licensing. Another potentially useful set of
typefaces is the Noto [5] family from Google.
B.5. Other Tools
In addition to generating and viewing PDF, other categories of PDF
tools are available and may be useful both during specification
development and for published RFCs. These include tools for
comparing two PDFs, checkers that could be used to validate the
results of conversion, reviewing and commentary tools that attach
annotations to PDF files, and digital signature creation and
validation.
Validation of an arbitrary author-generated PDF file would be quite
difficult; there are few PDF validation tools. However, if RFCs and
Internet-Drafts are generated by conversion from XML via xml2rfc,
then explicit validation of PDF and adherance to expected profiles
would mainly be useful to insure that xml2rfc has functioned
properly.
Recommendations:
o Discourage (but allow) submission of a PDF representation for
Internet-Drafts. In most cases, the PDF for an Internet-Draft
should be produced automatically when XML is suhmitted, with an
opportunity to verify the conversion.
Appendix C. Additional Reading
<http://www.pdflib.com/fileadmin/pdflib/pdf/whitepaper/Whitepaper-
Technical-Introduction-to-PDFA.pdf> <http://www.pdfa.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/08/tn0003_metadata_in_pdfa-1_2008-03-128.pdf>
<http://www.pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/PDFA-in-
a-Nutshell_1b.pdf> <http://www.pdfa.org/2011/08/pdfa-%E2%80%93-a-
look-at-the-technical-side/> <http://pdf.editme.com/pdfa>
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Appendix D. Acknowledgements
The input of the following people is gratefully acknowledged: Brian
Carpenter, Chris Dearlove, Martin Duerst, Heather Flanagan, Joe
Hildebrand, Duff Johnson, Leonard Rosenthol, ....
Authors' Addresses
Tony Hansen (editor)
AT&T Laboratories
200 Laurel Ave. South
Middletown, NJ 07748
USA
Email: tony+rfc2pdf@maillennium.att.com
Larry Masinter
Adobe
345 Park Ave
San Jose, CA 95110
USA
Email: masinter@adobe.com
URI: http://larry.masinter.net
Matthew Hardy
Adobe
345 Park Ave
San Jose, CA 95110
USA
Email: mahardy@adobe.com
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