Subject: New tool feature useful for WGs

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:56:04 -0800

Greetings again. The IETF Tools Team just made an update to the tools 
site that should be useful to WGs.

Before, when a new draft came out and you wanted to tell the WG to look 
at the diffs, you had to send the URL 
"http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=" with the draft name including the 
new draft number ("draft-ietf-somewg-someprot-10.txt"). When the next 
draft was issued, that email became stale; worse, someone reading it 
wouldn't know that they were looking at a diff that was not pointing to 
the latest draft.

Now, when you use 
"http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-ietf-somewg-someprot" with no 
version number, the tool automatically diffs the current version with 
the previous one. You no longer have to (or want to!) include the 
version number when you are asking the WG to look at the diffs.

Hat tip to the Tools Team, yet again!

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: "Bert (IETF) Wijnen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:37:20 +0100

That sounds great.

I also recall (but I may be wrong), that at some point in the past, if we did
This for a specific document, (following is an example):
    http://tools.ietf.org/wg/netconf/draft-ietf-netconf-4741bis/
that we would get all the revisions and for each rev a ptr to the diffs.
The example above seems to show only rev 0, 1 and 2, while we are
now up to rev 10.

Did this change on purpose or by accident?

Bert

On 2/15/11 4:56 PM, Paul Hoffman wrote:
> Greetings again. The IETF Tools Team just made an update to the tools site that should be useful to WGs.
>
> Before, when a new draft came out and you wanted to tell the WG to look at the diffs, you had to send the URL 
> "http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=" with the draft name including the new draft number ("draft-ietf-somewg-someprot-10.txt"). 
> When the next draft was issued, that email became stale; worse, someone reading it wouldn't know that they were looking at a diff 
> that was not pointing to the latest draft.
>
> Now, when you use "http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-ietf-somewg-someprot" with no version number, the tool automatically 
> diffs the current version with the previous one. You no longer have to (or want to!) include the version number when you are 
> asking the WG to look at the diffs.
>

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 17:55:53 +0100

Hi Bert,

> Did this change on purpose or by accident?

Two of the tools servers (which recently was taken into rotation) are
lagging.  I'm fixing this now.

Best,

	Henrik

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:05:40 -0500

It would be nice when you did an ID or RFC search, or just used the url 
to a particular draft, if the page that came up, in addition to the 
other links it has, had a link to the diff from prior version.

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:56:19 -0500

The URL tools.ietf.org/html/draft-whatever (or, 
tools.ietf.org/html/rfc####) has such links.

     Tony Hansen
     [email-masked]

On 2/15/2011 1:05 PM, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
> It would be nice when you did an ID or RFC search, or just used the 
> url to a particular draft, if the page that came up, in addition to 
> the other links it has, had a link to the diff from prior version.
>
>     Thanks,
>     Paul
>
>>>> Before, when a new draft came out and you wanted to tell the WG to 
>>>> look at the diffs, you had to send the URL
>>>> "http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=" with the draft name including 
>>>> the new draft number ("draft-ietf-somewg-someprot-10.txt").
>>>> When the next draft was issued, that email became stale; worse, 
>>>> someone reading it wouldn't know that they were looking at a diff
>>>> "http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-ietf-somewg-someprot" 
>>>> with no version number, the tool automatically
>>>> diffs the current version with the previous one. You no longer have 
>>>> to (or want to!) include the version number when you are

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:24:45 -0500

> tools.ietf.org/html/rfc####) has such links.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was wishing for.
(E.g. I see it with
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-sipping-sip-offeranswer-13)

But https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/ links me to
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-sipping-sip-offeranswer/
which doesn't have those links.

Too many twisty little passages, all different.

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:05:20 -0800

> which doesn't have those links.

Tools != Datatracker

---

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:35:20 -0500

________________________________________
From: [email-masked] [[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Paul Hoffman [[email-masked]]

Tools != Datatracker
________________________________________

True, but let us remember that only people who are deeply involved with the IETF infrastructure have any idea which features are "tools" and which are "datatracker".  Indeed, the IETF "user experience" would benefit greatly if this distinction was erased.

Dale

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:23:48 -0500

--On Tuesday, February 15, 2011 03:35:20 PM -0500 "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> True, but let us remember that only people who are deeply involved with
> the IETF infrastructure have any idea which features are "tools" and
> which are "datatracker".  Indeed, the IETF "user experience" would
> benefit greatly if this distinction was erased.

Unfortunately, it's a difficult distinction to erase, because it's the 
distinction between "official" infrastructure which the IETF controls and 
pays for (including development, maintenance, and also the server 
infrastructure it runs on) and a bunch of stuff put together by some 
volunteers which lots of people have found to be pretty useful.

It's pretty easy to tell the volunteer-maintained stuff from the "official" 
stuff, both from the URL's and because each has a fairly distinctive look.

-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <[email-masked]>
   Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:34:19 -0500

>> which doesn't have those links.

Yes, I recognize that.
So, what is the relationship between those things? Are these just 
parallel universes? Why are they different? Datatracker finds the things 
I want to look at. Can tools do the same thing?

I'm not pointing a finger at anybody - I know this is mostly volunteer 
labor. I'm just confused.

It would be really nice if it was possible to "click through" from any 
of the various starting points to all of the related interesting stuff. E.g.

- start with announcement of new draft. Click to see it. Click again to 
see diffs, earlier versions, alternative representations. After clicking 
to earlier version, click again to get a diff of *it* to its predecessor.

- start with a query for an RFC or draft, using datadracker. Then do all 
the same stuff.

- start from a link to a wg doc off the wg home page. Do all the same stuff.

	Thanks,
	Paul

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 22:11:29 -0500

> It would be really nice if it was possible to "click through" from any of
> the various starting points to all of the related interesting stuff. E.g.
>
> - start with announcement of new draft. Click to see it. Click again to see
> diffs, earlier versions, alternative representations. After clicking to
> earlier version, click again to get a diff of *it* to its predecessor.
>
> - start with a query for an RFC or draft, using datadracker. Then do all the
> same stuff.
>

You can click through from tools to tracker and back, for documents.
Here's the datatracker link to the document Bert mentioned above:

   https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-netconf-4741bis/

Note this in the top box:

   Other versions:	plain text, xml, pdf, html

If you click "html" there, you'll get the tools version:

   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-netconf-4741bis-09

At the top of the tools version is this:

   [Docs] [txt|pdf] [Tracker] [WG] [Email] [Diff1] [Diff2] [Nits]

And if you click "Tracker", you get back to the tracker info.

That's not the same as "erasing the difference", but at least you
*can* easily go back and forth.

Barry

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:33:49 +0100

Hi,

> Too many twisty little passages, all different.

Agreed.  And it is worthwhile to provide a lot of the features which
today live mostly on the tools servers also (or instead!) on the
datatracker.  Unfortunately, the database behind the datatracker is
also, because it 'just grew', full of twisty little passages, all
different:

http://merlot.tools.ietf.org/src/db/new/redesign/old-models.png

Instead of banging our heads against the walls of all those twisty
little passages forever, a new database schema has been designed, and
work is well under way of converting data and code to that new schema:

http://merlot.tools.ietf.org/src/db/new/redesign/models.png

Once this is in place, we can spend time making the datatracker nicer,
instead of endlessly hurting our heads trying to accomplish things in
the legacy code and data maze.

We'll get there :-)

Best,

	Henrik

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:07:43 -0500

Barry - *thank you*!!!

That really makes my day. I doubt I would ever have figured that out 
without being told, and it provides pretty much everything I was asking 
for. While it could be simpler, its "simple enough".

	Thanks again,
	Paul

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:09:19 -0500

> the legacy code and data maze.

Sounds good. Looking forward to it.

Meanwhile I'm pretty happy with the linkages Barry pointed out.

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:41:28 -0500

________________________________________
From: Jeffrey Hutzelman [[email-masked]]

It's pretty easy to tell the volunteer-maintained stuff from the "official"
stuff, both from the URL's and because each has a fairly distinctive look.
_________________________________________

Someone should get on top of straightening it out.

It's only "easy to tell" if one pays attention to "look", but not being a visually-oriented kind of guy, I don't, it's all dancing hamsters to me.  All I see is that the URLs start with "http://www.ietf.org/".  That's the IETF domain name, innit?  Which means the IETF is responsible for it, eh?  (And I notice that you haven't actually *said* what the difference in URLs is.)

If you have "unofficial stuff somehow related to the IETF", it would be a lot better if you got a different domain name for it, to make it clear that the IETF isn't responsible for it.

But really, if you've got a bunch of stuff maintained by volunteers that's supposed to be useful for the IETF community generally, that's no excuse for it to be non-uniform with the rest of the IETF site.

Dale

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:53:12 -0600

Dale,

The URLs for the tools pages are differentiated as http://tools.ietf.org/.

While I totally agree with you that it is confusing - the two separate login
ids is often a source of confusion, I'm of the mindset that it's far more
important the tools actually exist.  Certainly, the main ietf webpages have
improved significantly over the past decade, however, the tools pages have
been invaluable over the past decade and are far more feature rich.  While,
it would be ideal to have a single website, I personally see value in the
two separate websites in that updates to the tools happen more rapidly on
the tools page and I believe it gives chairs more control over their WG
space, if you will. For example, the wikis can be extremely useful, although
I notice that they are underutilized.

Regards,
Mary.

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Worley, Dale R (Dale) <[email-masked]>wrote:

> It's only "easy to tell" if one pays attention to "look", but not being a
> visually-oriented kind of guy, I don't, it's all dancing hamsters to me.
>  All I see is that the URLs start with "http://www.ietf.org/".  That's the
> IETF domain name, innit?  Which means the IETF is responsible for it, eh?
>  (And I notice that you haven't actually *said* what the difference in URLs
> is.)
>
> If you have "unofficial stuff somehow related to the IETF", it would be a
> lot better if you got a different domain name for it, to make it clear that
> the IETF isn't responsible for it.
>
> But really, if you've got a bunch of stuff maintained by volunteers that's
> supposed to be useful for the IETF community generally, that's no excuse for
> it to be non-uniform with the rest of the IETF site.
>
> Dale
>

---

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:59:19 -0500

________________________________________
From: Mary Barnes [[email-masked]]

Interesting!  Are all pages that do *not* have hostname "tools.ietf.org" part of the "datagracker" system?

Dale

---

From: Al Morton <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:24:52 -0500

At 09:41 AM 2/16/2011, Worley, Dale R (Dale) wrote:
>If you have "unofficial stuff somehow related to the IETF", it would 
>be a lot better if you got a different domain name for it, to make 
>it clear that the IETF isn't responsible for it.

http://tools.ietf.org/

no requirement to use anything there...

Al

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:24:53 -0600

No.  From the IETF home page, there is information that is under
www.ietf.org. However, all the detailed information (charters, drafts, etc.)
for the WGS are under datatracker: https://datatracker.ietf.org/

For example, this page summarizes what WGs and has links to all the useful
information, including WG chair specific pages:
http://www.ietf.org/wg/
Clickin on the *Active Working Group charters are available
here<http://www.ietf.org/dyn/wg/charter.html>
*  takes you to the datatracker pages.

So, IMHO, there is a fairly seamless interface to the tools pages and I find
that the addition of the link to the tools page for each of the WGs (from
the datatracker) makes things fairly seamless to me.  I usually go the
datatracker page for WGs and then navigate directly to the tools page.
Note also that there is a direct link to the tools pages from the main IETF
webpage (under Resources/Tools team pages).

Mary.