[zzq1015]

PSA: When posting an RFC or (especially) an RFC-draft, please use the IETF Datatracker URL.

For example, this one is: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-httpbis-safe-met...

The best way to view an RFC, IMHO, is to use the "htmlized" format: you can view and compare different versions, view errata for a formal RFC, and go back to Datatracker at any time.

Also, the Datatracker URL is version-insensitive, so unlike the pure HTML format, it will not be stuck on draft-14 forever.

[Hackbraten]

> please use the IETF Datatracker URL.

On my phone, your Datatracker link results in an unreadable mess of a page due to the hard-coded line breaks in the plaintext rendition of the RFC text (making it unreadable in portrait mode) and the huge sticky page nav (causing the content viewport to shrink vertically to almost zero in landscape mode). The HTML page behind OP's link reads just fine.

> The best way to view an RFC, IMHO, is to use the "htmlized" format

I don't see any choices of format such as HTML behind your link. There's a sticky nav, then a couple of pages of metadata, followed by a plaintext rendering of the RFC. What am I missing?

[dan-robertson]

When I open the link there is a table of information before the main RFC text. One row is titled ‘formats’ in bold and has a ‘htmlized’ link in it. Presumably that is what you were missing due to some understandable banner blindness.

[IanCal]

In the top section where there’s authors etc, there’s a format list. I didn’t see it the first time.

[znpy]

It reads decently in landscape mode, and i’m on a small screen (iPhone se 3rd gen).

[Hackbraten]

It shows me only seven lines of text at a time [0], too few for me to read comfortably, let alone make sense of e.g. diagrams. Firefox on Librem 5.

[0]: https://0x0.st/KJZ_.png

[zzq1015]

From the Datatracker, I can see that it was called SEARCH until draft-2 (Nov 2021), and then changed to QUERY.

Also, the previous SEARCH method was proposed in Apr 2015 (!!), but nobody took it seriously, and it never gained traction back then. A lot of software was developed/updated during the last decade, and a lot of opportunities were missed. Even if the QUERY method is turned into a formal RFC right now, expect 10+ years for everyone to adopt it, without running into HTTP-405 or 501's.

[nine_k]

It just takes some significant piece of server software to start accepting it, RFC or not. "Write code, not laws", or however was that formulated.

See the history of the PATCH method, and of the whole WebDAV thing.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

To quickly retrieve an RFC I use a script named "rfc". I save RFCs as text files not HTML so I prefer the .txt version

   echo https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc$1.txt|yy025|nc -vv 6f6b 80|yy045|less

yy025 makes custom HTTP, more flexible than curl

6f6b is TLS forward proxy

yy045 removes chunked encoding

less is more(1)

For drafts I use a metasearch script

+1 for non-paginated results

   ;;64) #``````````` datatracker
   shift
   x=$(echo "$x"|sed 's/ /+/g;s/++/+/g')
   echo "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/search?name=$x&activedrafts=on&olddrafts=on"|yy025|(yy084 64 "$x";nc -vv 6f6b 80)
   exit

yy084 makes SQL from SERP