RPC tasks (was Re: British or American spelling in IETF docs)

Hi all,

On 8/14/26 11:37 AM, John Levine wrote:
> It appears that John C Klensin  <[email protected]> said:
>> I hope to hear from Jean if what I'm about to say is not current
>> practice but, ...
> 
> I would also be interested in hearing from the RPC about what they do that
> takes a lot of time and we might be able to do without.

[JM] A list of tasks that the RPC performs can be found here:
https://authors.ietf.org/en/rfc-publication-process

Some time-intensive tasks can include checking source code, for example, 
copy editing the comments and references within long YANG modules. There 
is also detailed guidance for the Security Considerations sections of 
YANG modules that requires careful checking (RFC 9907 and 
https://wiki.ietf.org/group/ops/yang-security-guidelines).

The RPC also carefully reviews IANA Considerations sections to ensure 
that they match the registries and also ensures that any assigned values 
are used correctly in the document.

Checking the consistency of terminology in cluster documents also takes 
time, although our experimentation with AI agents is showing they could 
be helpful here.

Note that, while many of our tasks may not take a lot of time to 
execute, the tasks are numerous and the editing checklist has been 
growing over the years.  RPC throughput is less than it was a decade ago.


> 
> I'd be kind of surprised if US vs British usage was one of them because, as
> you note, they have to go through the document to edit grammar and usage anyway.


[JM] It doesn't take hours, but it also isn't a simple 
run-the-spell-check and be done with it.  When I go through a doc and 
find, say, the word "optimise", I then look for the following and assess 
whether their usage is consistent:

   o  "ise"/"isation" vs. "ize"/"ization"
   o  "iour" vs. "or" (behaviour/behavior)
   o  "lle" vs. "l" (labelled/labeled)
   o  "tre" vs. "ter" (centre/center)
   o  "yse" vs. "yze" (catalyse/catalyze)
   o  "ogue" vs. "og" (dialogue/dialog)
   o  "amme" vs. "am" (programme/program)
   o  past tense verbs that end in a "t" vs. "ed" (such as learnt/learned)

If it's inconsistent, then I can run the spell check and change the 
instances to American English.

> 
> I don't know how much time they spend turning random non-XML submissions into XML.
> Perhaps if that's a time sink we could consider telling people that if they want
> their draft turned into an RFC, they need to submit it in XML.  Given the tools
> we have to convert from markdown, that doesn't seem unreasonable.

[JM] The number of documents that don't have an RFCXML source is very 
small these days. In 2025, there were only 3 documents. I think there's 
only been one so far this year.

However, the RPC's efforts over the past year to support the 
kramdown-rfc format and the use of GitHub in Final Review has taken some 
time away from regular copy editing.

Best regards,
Jean

> 
> R's,
> John
>