parameter "-D" defunct

[reschke]

Describe the issue

with git@github.com:httpwg/http-extensions.git:

xml2rfc -D 2026-01-01 draft-ietf-httpbis-safe-method-w-body.xml

generated:

HTTP                                                          J. Reschke
Internet-Draft                                                greenbytes
Intended status: Standards Track                              J.M. Snell
Expires: 2 May 2026                                           Cloudflare
                                                               M. Bishop
                                                                  Akamai
                                                         29 October 2025

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the IETF's Code of Conduct

[kesara]

Looks like -D is ineffective where there's a <date> element in <front>.
When there's no <date> element in the <front> this function works as intended.
In the given example there's an empty <date> element in the <front>¹.

Footnotes

1. https://github.com/httpwg/http-extensions/blob/7cecac55e6ac2f2427e9603733a1073e4974055c/draft-ietf-httpbis-safe-method-w-body.xml#L54 ↩

[cabo]

The expectation should be that a command-line parameter overrides the XML.

At a very minimum, the command should never be silently ignoring the command-line parameter.

[reschke]

@kesara - confirmed. That actually helps me for now with my use case. That said, treating an empty date the same was as a missing date is... weird.

@cabo - agreed.

[reschke]

@cabo - it seems that kramdown-2629 inserts a date when it is not present. Is there a way to disable that? Otherwise the "no date element" attempt does not help here.

@kesara - so it would really good to get that improvement.

[cabo]

@cabo - it seems that kramdown-2629 inserts a date when it is not present. Is there a way to disable that? Otherwise the "no date element" attempt does not help here.

There should be the same logic as for references (date: false suppresses the date), but that is missing.

Now cabo/kramdown-rfc#270