Abstract

    This EEP provides a boilerplate or sample template for creating
    your own plaintext EEPs. In conjunction
    with the content guidelines in EEP 1 [1], this should make it easy
    for you to conform your own EEPs to the format outlined below.

    Note: if you are reading this EEP via the web, you should first
    grab the plaintext source of this EEP in order to complete the
    steps below.  DO NOT USE THE HTML FILE AS YOUR TEMPLATE!

    If you would prefer to use lightweight markup in your EEP, please
    see EEP 3, "Sample reStructuredText EEP Template" [2].

    This document is based on PEP 9 [3].

Rationale

    EEP submissions come in a wide variety of forms, not all adhering
    to the format guidelines set forth below.  Use this template, in
    conjunction with the content guidelines in EEP 1, to ensure that
    your EEP submission won't get automatically rejected because of
    form.

How to Use This Template

    To use this template you must first decide whether your EEP is
    going to be an Informational or Standards Track EEP.  Most EEPs
    are Standards Track because they propose a new feature for the
    Erlang language or standard library.  When in doubt, read EEP 1
    for details or contact the EEP editors <eeps@erlang.org>.

    Once you've decided which type of EEP yours is going to be, follow
    the directions below.

    - Make a copy of this file (.txt file, not HTML!) and perform the
      following edits.

    - Replace the "EEP: 2" header with "EEP: XXX" since you don't yet
      have an EEP number assignment.

    - Change the Title header to the title of your EEP.

    - Leave the Version and Last-Modified headers alone; we'll take
      care of those when we check your EEP into the Subversion
      repository.  These headers consist of keywords ("Revision" and
      "Date" enclosed in "$"-signs) which are automatically expanded
      by the repository.  Please do not edit the expanded date or
      revision text.

    - Change the Author header to include your name, and optionally
      your email address.  Be sure to follow the format carefully:
      your name must appear first, and it must not be contained in
      parentheses.  Your email address may appear second (or it can be
      omitted) and if it appears, it must appear in angle brackets.
      It is okay to obfuscate your email address.

    - If there is a mailing list for discussion of your new feature,
      add a Discussions-To header right after the Author header.  You
      should not add a Discussions-To header if the mailing list to be
      used is erlang-questions@erlang.org, or if discussions should be
      sent to you directly.  Most Informational EEPs don't have a
      Discussions-To header.

    - Change the Status header to "Draft".

    - For Standards Track EEPs, change the Type header to "Standards
      Track".

    - For Informational EEPs, change the Type header to
      "Informational".

    - For Standards Track EEPs, if your feature depends on the
      acceptance of some other currently in-development EEP, add a
      Requires header right after the Type header.  The value should
      be the EEP number of the EEP yours depends on.  Don't add this
      header if your dependent feature is described in a Final EEP.

    - Change the Created header to today's date.  Be sure to follow
      the format carefully: it must be in dd-mmm-yyyy format, where
      the mmm is the 3 English letter month abbreviation, e.g. one of
      Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.

    - For Standards Track EEPs, after the Created header, add a
      Erlang-Version header and set the value to the next planned
      version of Erlang, i.e. the one your new feature will hopefully
      make its first appearance in.  Thus, if the last version of
      Erlang/OTP was R11B-3 and you're hoping to get your new feature
      into R11B-4 set the version header to:

      Erlang-Version: R11B-4

    - Leave Post-History alone for now; you'll add dates to this
      header each time you post your EEP to
      erlang-questions@erlang.org. E.g. if you posted your EEP to the
      list on August 14, 2006 and September 3, 2006, the Post-History
      header would look like:

      Post-History: 14-Aug-2006, 03-Sept-2006

      You must manually add new dates and check them in.  If you don't
      have check-in privileges, send your changes to the EEP editor.

    - Add a Replaces header if your EEP obsoletes an earlier EEP.  The
      value of this header is the number of the EEP that your new EEP
      is replacing.  Only add this header if the older EEP is in
      "final" form, i.e. is either Accepted, Final, or Rejected.  You
      aren't replacing an older open EEP if you're submitting a
      competing idea.

    - Now write your Abstract, Rationale, and other content for your
      EEP, replacing all this gobbledygook with your own text.  Be sure
      to adhere to the format guidelines below, specifically on the
      prohibition of tab characters and the indentation requirements.

    - Update your References and Copyright section.  Usually you'll
      place your EEP under the CC0-1.0-Universal license,
      in which case just leave
      the "Copyright" section alone.  Alternatively, you can use the
      Open Publication License[4], but CC0-1.0-Universal license is
      still strongly preferred.

    - Leave the little Emacs turd at the end of this file alone,
      including the formfeed character ("^L", or \f).

    - Send your EEP submission to the EEP editors (eeps@erlang.org),
      (Funny Joke removed :)

Plaintext EEP Formatting Requirements

    EEP headings must begin in column zero and the initial letter of
    each word must be capitalized as in book titles.  Acronyms should
    be in all capitals.  The body of each section must be indented 4
    spaces.  Code samples inside body sections should be indented a
    further 4 spaces, and other indentation can be used as required to
    make the text readable.  You must use two blank lines between the
    last line of a section's body and the next section heading.

    You must adhere to the Emacs convention of adding two spaces at
    the end of every sentence.  You should fill your paragraphs to
    column 70, but under no circumstances should your lines extend
    past column 79.  If your code samples spill over column 79, you
    should rewrite them.

    Tab characters must never appear in the document at all.  An EEP
    should include the standard Emacs stanza included by example at
    the bottom of this EEP.

    When referencing an external web page in the body of an EEP, you
    should include the title of the page in the text, with a
    footnote reference to the URL.  Do not include the URL in the body
    text of the EEP.  E.g.

        Refer to the Erlang Language web site [1] for more details.
        ...
        [1] http://www.erlang.org

    When referring to another EEP, include the EEP number in the body
    text, such as "EEP 1".  The title may optionally appear.  Add a
    footnote reference, a number in square brackets.  The footnote
    body should include the EEP's title and author.  It may optionally
    include the explicit URL on a separate line, but only in the
    References section.  Note that the eep2html.py script will
    calculate URLs automatically.  For example:

            ...
            Refer to EEP 1 [7] for more information about EEP style
            ...

        References

            [7] EEP 1, EEP Purpose and Guidelines, Gustafsson
                http://www.erlang.org/eeps/eep-0001.html

    If you decide to provide an explicit URL for an EEP, please use
    this as the URL template:

        http://www.erlang.org/eeps/eep-xxxx.html

    EEP numbers in URLs must be padded with zeros from the left, so as
    to be exactly 4 characters wide, however EEP numbers in the text
    are never padded.

References

    [1] EEP 1, EEP Purpose and Guidelines, Gustafsson
        http://www.erlang.org/eeps/eep-0001.html

    [2] EEP 3, Sample reStructuredText EEP Template, Gustafsson
        http://www.erlang.org/eeps/eep-0003.html

    [3] PEP 9, Sample Plaintext PEP Template, Warsaw
        http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0009/

    [4] http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/

Copyright

    This document is placed in the public domain or under the
    CC0-1.0-Universal license, whichever is more permissive.

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