specifications

Specification and standard documents
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      1 Specification: 0000                                                   Robin Bron
      2 Obsoleted by: 0003                                                   August 2018
      3 
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      5                               Specification Format
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     52 Copyright Notice
     53 
     54    This document is licensed under a
     55    Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
     56 
     57    You should have received a copy of the license along with this work. If not,
     58    see <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>
     59 
     60 Bron                                                                    [Page 1]
     61 SPEC 0000                    Specification Format                    August 2018
     62 
     63 Table of contents
     64 
     65     1. Conventions ........................................................... 3
     66     2. Character encoding .................................................... 3
     67     3. Line definition ....................................................... 3
     68        3.1 Line numbering .................................................... 3
     69     4. Pages ................................................................. 3
     70        4.1 Page header ....................................................... 3
     71        4.2 Page footer ....................................................... 3
     72     5. Paragraphs ............................................................ 3
     73     6. Document header ....................................................... 4
     74        6.1. Descriptive header ............................................... 4
     75        6.2. Short author identification ...................................... 4
     76        6.3. Publish date ..................................................... 4
     77     7. Document footer ....................................................... 5
     78     8. Section titles ........................................................ 5
     79     9. Document title ........................................................ 5
     80    10. Informative resources ................................................. 6
     81    11. Author information .................................................... 7
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    120 Bron                                                                    [Page 2]
    121 SPEC 0000                    Specification Format                    August 2018
    122 
    123 1. Conventions
    124 
    125    The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD",
    126    "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
    127    document are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119 when, and only when,
    128    they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
    129 
    130 2. Character Encoding
    131 
    132    Plain-text files for specifications MUST use the UTF-8 standard.
    133 
    134 3. Line definition
    135 
    136    A line of text is a sequence of 0 or more characters followed by a line feed
    137    character. For the sake of and clarity, the ending line feed character is not
    138    part of the line.
    139 
    140    Lines MUST NOT exceed 80 characters in length, excluding the ending line feed
    141    character. A line is called a blank line if it consists of 0 characters.
    142 
    143 3.1. Line numbering
    144 
    145    Assuming a document is in digital format[1] and has a length of greater than
    146    0 bytes, the first character in the document is part of line 1.
    147 
    148 4. Pages
    149 
    150    A page is a sequence of 60 lines. That means for every line number n, the
    151    line is the start of a new page when n mod 60 = 1.
    152 
    153 4.1 Page header
    154 
    155    The first line of a page SHOULD consist of a left-aligned spec number
    156    indicator, a centered (short) document title and a right-aligned short
    157    publishing date (see 6.3). Line 2 of a page MUST always be blank, excluding
    158    the first page of the document.
    159 
    160 4.2 Page footer
    161 
    162    The last line of a page MUST consist of a left-align last name of the
    163    author or authors and a right-aligned page number between square brackets.
    164    The second-to-last line of a page must be blank, just like line 2 of a page.
    165 
    166 5. Paragraphs
    167 
    168    A paragraph is a sequence of consecutive lines all of a length greater than 0
    169    characters. Paragraphs are separated by either one or more blank lines or a
    170    page break. Paragraphs MUST NOT span multiple pages, limiting their size to
    171    56 lines.
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    180 Bron                                                                    [Page 3]
    181 SPEC 0000                    Specification Format                    August 2018
    182 
    183 6. Document header
    184 
    185    The first lines of the first page of a specification document MUST always
    186    contain left-aligned description headers (see 6.1) and right-aligned author
    187    identification and a right-aligned publishing date.
    188 
    189    After the initial lines (see 6.1 through 6.3), references to other
    190    specifications MUST be included when the specification obsoletes or updates
    191    the references specification.
    192 
    193    After the initial lines and the references, the document title is REQUIRED to
    194    be written on the first page of the document. For it's specification, see
    195    section 9.
    196 
    197    The bottom of the first page of the document MUST include a copyright notice
    198    and/or license, a link to the license or the inclusion text required by the
    199    license in question.
    200 
    201 6.1. Descriptive header
    202 
    203    Each descriptive header is made up of a key and a value. Whitespace is not
    204    allowed in both the key and the value. Whitespace can only be included in the
    205    value by wrapping the value in quote characters.
    206 
    207    The key of the header consists of all characters of the line up to the first
    208    semicolon, excluding the semicolon itself and omitting all white-space
    209    characters.
    210 
    211    The value of the header starts at the first non-whitespace character after
    212    the first semicolon of the line. If the first character is a quote, the value
    213    ends at the next quote in the line. If the first character is not a quote,
    214    the value ends at the next whitespace character.
    215 
    216 6.2. Short author identification
    217 
    218    In order to allow the author or authors to take some credit and to track who
    219    has written what, the author's name MUST be added right-aligned on the first
    220    line of the first page of the document. To prevent mixing notations between
    221    documents, the names SHOULD be written as only the first letters of all given
    222    names in capitals, separated by dots, a space and the Family name starting
    223    with an uppercase character. When written by a group with a name, the short
    224    author identification string SHOULD state the group's name instead of the
    225    individual authors.
    226 
    227 6.3. Publish date
    228 
    229    Dates contained in specification documents following the format described in
    230    this document MUST follow the Gregorian calendar.
    231 
    232    The publish date of the document MUST include a month starting with a capital
    233    character and fully written year. The day of the month MAY be added on the
    234    first page of the document, but MUST NOT be included in the short date on all
    235    pages.
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    240 Bron                                                                    [Page 4]
    241 SPEC 0000                    Specification Format                    August 2018
    242 
    243 7. Document footer
    244 
    245    The document SHOULD close, starting on a new page, with all informative
    246    resources which were used to write the document, noting their keyword and
    247    document title. A URI to the resource SHOULD be included.
    248 
    249    After the informative resources, the document SHOULD end with one or several
    250    pages dedicated to the information of the author or authors.
    251 
    252 8. Section titles
    253 
    254    Section titles SHOULD be a short text about the subject the section
    255    describes. Whether it is simply the keyword of what it explains, a problem
    256    statement or other type of text is up to the author as long as it's relevant
    257    to the section's body and fits within a single line.
    258 
    259    A section title MUST start with a capital character & MUST NOT contain any
    260    other capital letters, excluding where they are required in names or
    261    abbreviations.
    262 
    263 9. Document title
    264 
    265    The title of the document should clearly state the main subject of the
    266    document and it's contents. Each word of the document title MUST start with a
    267    capital character when noted as the title of the document.
    268 
    269    On the first page of the document, the title should be centered horizontally
    270    and have at least 2 blank lines both above and below it. The document title
    271    SHOULD be as close to the document's descriptive headers as possible.
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    300 Bron                                                                    [Page 5]
    301 SPEC 0000                    Specification Format                    August 2018
    302 
    303 10. Informative resources
    304 
    305    [RFC2119]  RFC Key Words
    306               S. Bradner
    307               https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119
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    360 Bron                                                                    [Page 6]
    361 SPEC 0000                    Specification Format                    August 2018
    362 
    363 11. Author information
    364 
    365    Name ....... Robin Bron
    366    Nickname ... Finwo
    367    EMail ...... robin@finwo.nl
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    420 Bron                                                                    [Page 7]