rfclint 0.5.1

Perform a set of checks on an RFC input file to check for errors.

Perform Validation checks on Internet-Drafts

There are a number of tasks that need to be performed when an Internet-Draft is begin process to create an RFC. This tool performs a subset of those actions. The actions performed are:

• Validate the file is well formed XML and that it conforms to the XML2RFC Version 3 schema as defined in RFC 7991.

• Verify that embedded XML stanzas are well formed.

• Verify that embedded ABNF is complete and well formed.

• Identify misspelled words.

• Detect duplicate words.

The tool can be used either in an interactive mode or in batch mode.

Usage

rfclint accepts a single XML document as input and optionally outputs a modified version of the document.

Basic Usage: rfclint [options] SOURCE

General Options

General options for the program

Short	Long	Description
-C	--clear-cache	purge the cache and exit
-N	--no-network	don’t use the network to resolve references
-n	--no-rng	don’t check against the RNG schema
-q	--quiet --save-config	don’t print anything save configuration back to config file
-v	--verbose	print extra information
-V	--version	display the version number and exit
-X	--no-xinclude	don’t resolve xi:include elements
-c DIRECTORY	--cache=DIRECTORY --configfile=FILENAME	specify the primary cache directory to write to specify the configuration file to use
-o FILENAME	--out=FILENAME	specify an output filename
-r RNG	--rng=RNG --extract=TYPE	specify an alternate RNG file extract all source code for the given type

Spelling Options

The following options affect how the spell checking is performed.

Short	Long	Description
x	--no-dup-detection	don’t perform duplicate detection
x	--no-spell	don’t perform spell checking on the source
x	--no-suggest	don’t provide suggestions for misspelled words
x	--no-spell	provide suggestions for misspelled words (default)
x	--color=TEXT	specify the color to use for word highlighting
x	--dictionary=FILENAME	specify an additional dictionary to use
x	--personal=FILENAME	specify the personal dictionary to use
x	--spell-program=FILENAME	program to use for spell checking
x	--spell-window=NUM	how many words to display as part of the context

It is assumed that the spell checking program is aspell and that aspell is on the path. For Windows systems, it additionally look in “C:\Program Files (x86)\Aspell\bin” for the program. If a different program is given, then it should be either an absolute path or on the path so that it can be located.

When a misspelled word is located, a certain amount of context will be provided along with the file and line number of the word. The spell-window parameter controls how many words are displayed with up to that number of words being displayed before and after the misspelled word. The context window is also restricted to the current paragraph. The color option allows for the misspelled word to be highlighted, but it requires VT100 terminal emulation and thus may not always work well on Windows systems. The color defaults to ‘bright’ on non-Windows systems and ‘none’ on Windows systems. If the value of spell-window is 0, then no context will be displayed.

ABNF Checking Options

Short	Long	Description
x	--no-abnf	don’t perform abnf checking on the source
x	--abnf-add-rules	ABNF file to include when checking
x	--abnf-program=FILENAME	specify program to use for ABNF checking

Configuration File

rfclint keeps configuration information in a configuration file. By default the file is stored at

• On Windows: c:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\rfclint\IETF\rfclint.cfg

• Otherwise: /home/USER/.local/share/rfclint/rfclint.cfg

The format of the configuration file is the standard INI file format.

Spell Configuration

• program - name of the spelling program to use - defaults to aspell

• window - number of words to display on each side of a misspelled word

• color - color to use to highlight the misspelled word

• suggest - Should suggested values be displayed? value is 0 or 1

• dictionaries - a comma separated list of dictionaries to include

ABNF Configuration

• program - name of the ABNF program to use - defaults to bap provided w/ rfclint

• addRules - name of file to be processed along with rules in the source

Dependencies

rfclint depends on the following packages:

• lxml (>= 4.1.1)

• requests (>= 2.5.0)

• rfctools_common (>= 0.1.0)

Changelog

Version 0.5.1 (Sun XX Mar)

• Set up to all for publishing to PyPI

Version 0.5.0 (Sun 25 Feb)

• If ANBF program not found, then wrong name was printed

• Allow for both hunspell and aspell to be used for spell checking

• On windows, do not require the .exe extension to be specified

• Enable characters outside of the ASCII range to be spell checked This is not supported on all platforms and with all spell programs

Version 0.0.3 (Sun 11 Feb)

• Handle errors when an executable is missing better

• Add the ability for having personal and additional dictionaries.