Introduction to xml2rfc Presenter: Elwyn Davies Sunday, 19 March 2006 at 15:00 - 17:00 ====================================== xml2rfc is becoming increasingly popular as a way to produce Internet Drafts (and RFCs). This tutorial will introduce the markup language used in xml2rfc and describe a selection of the tools (both free and paid for) that can be used to create the marked up text and turn it into the finished document in normative ASCII, HTML for more elegant web usage or nroff as used for the RFC masters. The tutorial will start with a very brief introduction to XML markup for complete novices and will cover the usage of the 'processing instructions' that are available to control the appearance of the final document. The set of elements used in xml2rfc has been deliberately kept very small so that it is very easy to learn basic usage of the language. As a result there isn't always an obvious way to achieve certain effects so a number of useful 'tricks and tips' will be covered that provide the 'cliché needed as solutions to Frequently Asked Questions and highlight some of the pitfalls so that editors can avoid having to tear out their hair just before draft deadline time. Using xml2rfc relieves draft editors of the need to think about the overhead of getting the boilerplate and overall format right, and provides automated bibliographies that reduce the pain of generating references to existing drafts, RFCs and some other standard document series. The RFC Editor is increasingly using xml2rfc as a way to generate the source of the published RFC so that providing xml2rfc source can help reduce the turnround time when a draft is being converted into an RFC.