This book is a collection of RFCs and Internet-Drafts related to specific working group. The RFC and Internet-Drafts files are normally stored in plain ascii text format and they are converted to html suitable for eBook use by automatic scripts. Those scripts try to detect headers, pictures, lists, references etc and create special html for each of those. For text paragraphs those scripts remove indentation and hard linebreaks and makes text paragraphs as normal text so font size of the eBook can be adjusted at will and features like text-to-speech work.
As this conversion is completely automatic there might be errors in the converted files. I have tried to fix the issues when I find them, but sometimes fixing issue in one RFC cause problems in others, so not all errors can be easily fixed, this is especially true for very old RFCs which do not follow the formatting specifications. If you notice errors in the formatting please send email to the <kivinen+rfc-ebook@iki.fi> and describle the problem. Please, remember to include the RFC number and the version number of the eBook file (found from the cover page).
As the collection of RFCs is quite large there has been some issues with the conversion to kindle, and some features do not seem to work properly when full set of RFCs is used. Because of this some work-arounds have been made to make the eBook still usable. If the kindle software gets updated some of those work-arounds might be removed. For more information about those see the Conversion section.
The primary output format of the scripts is the .mobi format used in the kindle, and I have been using Kindle 3 as my primary testing device, so if other reader devices are used, there might be more issues. The automatic tools also create the .ePub file, which can be used on platforms which do not support .mobi format. There is program called mobipocket for reading .mobi files, and that program is available for wide range of devices including PalmOS, Symbian, PC, Windows Mobile, Blackberry etc, so also those devices can be used in addition to normal eBook readers.
In this section I will concentrate mostly on how to use this on Kindle 3. This eBook contains 5 main parts:
The cover page includes the date when this eBook was created (i.e. eBook version).
The conversion section includes technical information how this eBook was created and some known issues etc.
There are four main ways to navigate through the book in addition to normal page up and down.
Fastest way to go to specific RFC or Internet-Draft is to press menu button on the Kindle 3, and then select Index from the menu. This will give you the automatic index of the contents of the this file. This allows quick access to the RFC by just typing the numbers to the search box, i.e. pressing Alt-t, Alt-o, Alt-o, Alt-y will jump you to the RFC 5996 and then you can use arrow down to select RFC and hit enter to go there. For internet draft start typing the draft name.
Another option is to use the RFC Index in the beginning of the file (You can ge to there by either pressing menu, selecting Index and then clicking on the Index in the beginning of the index, or by pressing menu, selecting Go to... and then selecting Table of Contents).
Third option is to use left and right arrows to navigate the next and previous RFC/Internet-Drafts.
The fourth way to navigate inside the book is to use the links inside the files. The RFC Index has direct links to every 100th RFC. Each file contains links to back 5, forward 5, next and previous rfc. Also any reference inside the documents pointing to other RFCs gets you directly there. Some of the links inside RFC moves you inside the RFC, i.e. clicking link on the table of contents inside the RFC moves you to that section etc. Also references inside the RFC will move you to the refences section etc.