Octa Engineering Notes                                   Christian Elías
Request for Comments: OCTA-22                                  octa.page
Category: Informational                                        July 2026


       Serving every article as an RFC-style plain text document

Abstract

   Every article now has a /doc/:slug.txt version rendered as a classic
   IETF RFC: 72-column body, chronological OCTA-n numbering, numbered
   sections, links collected into a References section — generated at
   build time from the Markdown source with marked's lexer.

Status of This Memo

   This memo documents notes notes for the Internet community. It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited. The canonical version lives at
   https://octa.page/doc/serving-articles-as-rfcs/ and the
   machine-readable source at
   https://octa.page/doc/serving-articles-as-rfcs.md

   Every article on this site is now also served as an RFC-style plain
   text document at "/doc/:slug.txt", alongside the existing HTML and
   raw Markdown ("/doc/:slug.md") versions.

   $ curl -s https://octa.page/doc/timezone-propagation-flow.txt | head -6
   Octa Engineering Notes                                   Christian Elías
   Request for Comments: OCTA-20                                  octa.page
   Category: Informational                                        June 2026


        Timezone Propagation: How IANA Changes Reach Your Application

   This site already hosts two articles about IPoAC and a real Internet
   Draft submitted to the IETF, so the format is on brand rather than a
   random gimmick.

1.  Format

   o  Header: classic two-column RFC header. The RFC number is the
      article's chronological position across the whole notebook — the
      first published entry is "OCTA-1". This also keeps the header
      inside 72 columns, which long slugs would not.
   o  Abstract: the frontmatter "description", verbatim.
   o  Status of This Memo: fixed IETF boilerplate, linking the canonical
      HTML version and the ".md" source.
   o  Body: 72-column prose with 3-space indent, "1." / "1.1." numbered
      sections from H2/H3, "o" bullets, code blocks verbatim.
   o  References: external links in the prose become "label [n]"
      markers, with URLs accumulated into a numbered References section
      at the end.
   o  Footer: "Author — Informational — [Page 1]".

2.  Implementation

   One static endpoint, "src/pages/doc/[slug].txt.ts", ~170 lines, no
   new dependencies. Instead of using "marked"'s HTML renderer (already
   a dependency for the RSS feed), the endpoint walks "marked.lexer()"
   tokens directly and emits text: headings pick up section numbers,
   inline links mutate a shared "refs" array, and a 5-line word-wrapper
   handles the 72-column constraint. "getStaticPaths" collects all
   entries across collections and sorts by date to assign the OCTA
   number.

   HTML article pages advertise both alternates:

   <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href=".../doc/slug.md">
   <link rel="alternate" type="text/plain" title="RFC-style plain text" href=".../doc/slug.txt">

   Deliberately skipped: tables and raw HTML pass through verbatim, and
   real RFC pagination (58-line pages, form feeds, per-page "[Page N]"
   footers) is deferred until the joke proves it deserves it.


Christian Elías              Informational                      [Page 1]