
Pretty RFC - knowtheory
http://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com/
======
citricsquid
As it feels relevant, here's a site of mine that includes all the HTTP Status
Codes in an easy referenceable format: <http://httpstatus.es/>

~~~
Tobu
<http://httpcats.heroku.com/>

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samwilliams
While httpstatus.es seems much more functional (the short descriptions on the
index are a really nice touch), this one just made my day. Thanks!

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zwp
Cute, I like the way ASCII art is preserved.

Small bug: RFCs < 1000 that are not prettifiable have a extraneous zero in the
datatracker.ietf.org link.

Eg: <http://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com/RFC123>

redirects to: <http://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com/RFC0123> (left padding is
probably a mistake here; some day we will have >9999 RFCs)

links to: <http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc0123/> (404)

should link to: <http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc123/>

ps. XML format for RFCs that this leans on: <http://pretty-
rfc.herokuapp.com/RFC2629>

~~~
mislav
Thanks for the report. Fixed.

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wangweij
I prefer the format at <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616>. It has links and
it also represents the precise original spec. The version here omits several
sections and looks too dense. The link pane on the left is good.

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samstokes
Wow, the navigation sidebar definitely increases the usability of the RFCs.

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kijeda
It would have more utility if in the search box you could type the RFC/BCP/STD
number, e.g. "1591" or "STD 3".

Unfortunately every RFC I tried, except for the provided examples, returned
"Could not prettify this RFC".

~~~
mislav
Added that you can write the RFC number in the search box. Will do so for
BCP/STD in the future.

Yes, "could not prettify this RFC" is a problem I'm having right now because
most sources aren't available. I'm working on obtaining those sources.

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jacquesm
Suggestion: change the linked email addresses to a graphical representation.
It may not help much but this lowers the barrier a bit too much for some
clueless newbie to 'click on the link to email for support'. RFCs have fairly
limited visibility and that's why those addresses are on there, if you
significantly increase the visibility then you should probably build in a
small barrier before the contact info can be used rather than to make it super
easy.

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ionforce
Awesome. But I've never heard of the "is now diamonds" meme...

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snprbob86
It is a reference to Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" ads:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE>

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goblin89
There are EPUB and Mobipocket versions of all RFCs already available, by the
way. See this thread: [http://www.ietf.org/mail-
archive/web/79attendees/current/msg...](http://www.ietf.org/mail-
archive/web/79attendees/current/msg00705.html).

~~~
telemachos
The link to the mobi versions still works, but not the epub link. After some
quick Googling I can't find a working source for them.

Still, it sounds like a great resource. If anyone knows of a working link for
the epub, please let us know.

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rcsorensen
I love this a lot.

Minor formatting issue, perhaps. The braced formed of reference ends up losing
something in the current parsing. Seeing something like "reference in RFC 1234
<a>RFC 1234</a>" jars me out of reading the document. It would be pretty neat
in those cases to collapse the string so it was simply "reference in <a>RFC
1234</a>". In the cases where you can't collapse the string, to preserve
reading flow, it might make sense to leave the braces surrounding the link.

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pcl
Nice stuff. I'd love to see line-number ranges on hover over paragraphs /
sentences, too, to support line-number-based conversations.

What's this using as a data source?

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augusto_hp
Very close layout to <http://documentup.com/> Which is nice =D Kudos to the
effort, great app.

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postfuturist
Awesome! Small, but important bug is that internal links are broken:

correct link : <http://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com/RFC2616#character.sets>

link in text : <http://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com/RFC2616#character-sets>

~~~
mislav
Thanks for reporting! I really need to improve internal linking.

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ndespres
When I search for "1483", my only result is 2684, which supersedes it. But
when I try to view it, I'm told "The source XML for this RFC isn't available,
therefore it can't be reformatted." Did the IETF shut you down?

I don't think the original documents on the IETF datatracker site are that
bad- it seems pretty clean and easy to read already.

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saurik
The RFC for IMAP returns the same error regarding the XML source. I had
assumed that it was parsing the text files, but apparently it only supports
parsing the subset of RFCs that have XML available. :(

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rjurney
This is great. Small complaint: searching for RFC2822 comes up with nothing.
2822 gets what I want. Plz to fix :)

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mislav
Done :)

~~~
rjurney
High five!

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aparadja
Thank you so much. I've waded through plenty of unformatted RFCs this week,
and this is everything I've hoped for.

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CasualSuperman
Would be nice if it converted lists into their <ol> or <ul> equivalents.

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elehack
Very nice - this will make RFC reading much easier. Would be nice to have
DuckDuckGo use it - will submit !bang request.

Any timeframe on finishing RFC coverage? RFC 3514 isn't prettyfied yet.

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gghh
awesome project. there is some work in progress for a duckduckhack plugin[1]
on this:
[https://duckduckhack.uservoice.com/forums/5168-plugins/sugge...](https://duckduckhack.uservoice.com/forums/5168-plugins/suggestions/2815972-rfc-
search)

dunno, maybe those two efforts can be joined.

[1] [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/05/introducing-
duck...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/05/introducing-
duckduckhack.html)

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MichaelGG
Finally! I've even paid for Word documents of RFCs (hello, SIP) just to have
them marked up, without the idiotic headers in the middle of each page, and
hyperlinked throughout.

Compared to reading some other specs (like, say, some of the SCSI ones) RFCs
are just painful. Especially with the ASCII art diagrams.

Now, if only the IETF could realise that "being liberal in what you accept" is
a horrible idea and remove all usages of SHOULD/MAY or "infer", we'd really be
rolling.

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zobzu
I might be weird but I find the RFC-editor font easier to read.

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porges
It would be nice if the errata for each RFC was included somewhere - perhaps
in the right margin for the relevant section?

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ryan_stevens
Lame, that sites doesn't even have your standard Cat Response Codes
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/girliemac/sets/7215762840946712...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/girliemac/sets/72157628409467125/detail/)

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jrockway
Interesting. I thought I wanted something like this, but the problem with RFCs
is the archaic writing style. It's hard to understand the details of a low-
level network protocol when you also have to remember their redefinitions of
words like SHOULD, MUST, MAY, MIGHT, PERHAPS, QUITE POSSIBLY and sort through
ASCII art that is split across multiple pages. (The standards are also
excessively wordy and poorly organized. And if you think the problem is just
me, try finding any piece of software that actually correctly implements any
RFC spec :)

So basically, the all text format of RFCs is the least of their problems. But
this is a nice attempt.

(I wonder how many people die every year because the National Weather Service
issues tornado warnings in ALL CAPS with VROUS ABREVS throughout the text.
Computers can do lowercase now, guys...)

~~~
signa11
> So basically, the all text format of RFCs is the least of their problems.

try reading specs that are from 3gpp, and then you would realize the bastion
of clarity that is ietf. and the format of 3gpp specs is ms-word (yes you read
_that_ right), there is zero hyper-linking across various specs, finding how
something works etc. is a matter of opening up at least 3-5 documents, and
have a standards guy next to you to make sense of it all...

~~~
krig
I was going to make this exact comment. I've been working on implementing part
of the 3GPP diameter protocols, and they are an absolute nightmare in
comparison to reading RFCs. So many documents that mostly repeat what other
documents say, adding a small piece of information here and there with
hundreds of cross-references, in a completely unreadable format.

As for the ms-word-ness, I recommend this site for PDF versions of the
documents [1]. Just bask in the ridiculous amount of versions and documents in
that list and be happy that RFCs are at least human-readable and in a
standardized format...

1: <http://quintillion.co.jp/3GPP/Specs/>

~~~
signa11
oh dear lord! diameter is totally insane. other than the base protocol,
everything else e.g. the gx _, s6_ specs are impossible to decipher. with
multiple versions etc. things are even more insane, and hunting down for duffs
boils down following the cr's for the version. aghhh! I have been using the
above site that you mentioned, but it still doesn't take the pain away...

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japhyr
I notice this is a heroku app. Do you mind sharing what heroku plan you are
using, and how well your setup is handling today's traffic? Have you had to do
anything significant to handle a spike in traffic today?

~~~
mislav
The app is running on a single (free) Heroku dyno, PostgreSQL as db & full
text index, and fronted with Rack::Cache using 5MB memcache for storage (also
free).

It survived being first on HN for hours, no probs.

<https://github.com/mislav/rfc/blob/74b4181/app.rb>

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bitops
Really nice work! This will come in very handy when referencing information.
If there's a way to donate to the development effort, I'd be happy to kick in
a few bucks.

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hcarvalhoalves
Simple pretty hacks are the best hacks.

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fsniper
Very good. But search should include an indicator if the target rfc is
prettified or not.

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mmahemoff
Now you just need to make the HTML5 specs human-parseable.

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xnxn
I like the idea! But... I'm just not a fan of Bootstrap's typography. IMHO,
it's too dense and low contrast, especially compared to the Flask Sphinx theme
(my measuring stick for beautiful, readable documentation).

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LVB
"Read it from offical location" just sounds vulgar.

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zomgbbq
Excellent use of the bootstrap css!

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karanmg
Much easier to read. Thanks.

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mikelikespie
Doesn't work with 6455 :(

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sodelate
the content page is not looking good,like the featured HTTP 1.1

