Subject: RE: A modest proposal - allow the ID repository to hold xml

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 10:45:32 -0700

At 1:22 PM -0400 9/2/03, Rosen, Brian wrote:
>I think there are quite a few reasons.  Mine are:
>1) Ability to render in alternate ways to improve
>	readability and accessibility

Please be more specific on "accessibility". Which groups of people 
are currently excluded, or would be much more included with XML 
documents?

>2) Ability to cross reference documents

That benefit only appears if all, or a significant proportion, of the 
Internet Drafts are in XML or a similar format. That's not what you 
proposed.

>3) More uniformity in, e.g. references

In what way is that helpful? Are there kinds of references commonly 
used now that don't work well?

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 11:46:09 -0700 (PDT)

> Internet Drafts are in XML or a similar format. That's not what you 

   It seems to me that a fairly simple hack could be
   consed up to generate HTML or whatever for current
   RFC's and drafts given .txt input which automatically
   goes the through the references section to make
   hyperlinks. In fact that would be a pretty
   nifty feature regardless of this debate...

	 Mike

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 14:50:52 -0400

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>>>>> "IMC" == IMC  <Paul> writes:

    IMC> Please be more specific on "accessibility". Which groups of people 
    IMC> are currently excluded, or would be much more included with XML 
    IMC> documents?

  Not clear to me, but it certainly makes it easier to steal good formatting
from other drafts :-)

    >> 2) Ability to cross reference documents

    IMC> That benefit only appears if all, or a significant proportion, of the 
    IMC> Internet Drafts are in XML or a similar format. That's not what you 
    IMC> proposed.

  We presently have all of the RFCs in referenceable form.
  Many IDs are available in XML, but we can't find them, so we have to make
new XML biblio files.

    >> 3) More uniformity in, e.g. references

    IMC> In what way is that helpful? Are there kinds of references commonly 
    IMC> used now that don't work well?

  It makes referencing documents very easy.

]      Out and about in Ottawa.    hmmm... beer.                |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another Debian/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 14:12:46 -0700 (PDT)

>    nifty feature regardless of this debate...

Such hacks already exist

	http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/

and work fairly well for the more recent RFCs, which follow a fairly
regular set of formatting rules. But internet-drafts are sufficiently
irregular in format that this approach doesn't seem to work all that well.

And why should you have to guess when you don't have to?

			Ned

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From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 08:27:57 +0300

>    consed up to generate HTML or whatever for current

I'd very much like to allow the submission of XML to the
I-D directories.

However, in addition I'd like to actually allow the
submission of HTML, generated by xml2rfc. Why? Because
I'd really like to browse most drafts through my browser,
jump to sections,  find the references easily etc. And without
performing any extra steps by myself.

(It may be that this is possible via XML as well -- I'm
not expert in XML so I can't tell if its readily supported
by everyone's browser without loading lots of DTDs. Does
someone know?)

And all of these submission formats should be allowed if
and only there's a text version to go with it.

--Jari

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From: Lyndon Nerenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 03:23:49 -0600 (MDT)

> performing any extra steps by myself.

One of the primary reasons for proposing XML as the canonical RFC format
is that these other formats (ASCII text, HTML, PDF/Postscript,
refer/indxbib, SQL, Tektronix 4013) can be derived from the XML source.

Presumably the RFC editor would publish the XML document as the
authoritative version, and would also generate and publish (from the XML)
alternative copies in the ASCII text, PDF, and HTML formats.

This satisfies the "plain ASCII text rules" bigots (in which camp I am
still firmly entrenched) while taking advantage of the markup and linking
facilities provided by PDF and HTML. (I've completely given up hope that
Microsoft will ever acknowledge that non-flowed text/plain must be
rendered with a mono-spaced font, fifty years of prior art be damned, eh?)

> by everyone's browser without loading lots of DTDs. Does

The point of XML is that you don't have to be able to read it. Given an
XML DTD for RFCs, tools can be written that express the XML in pretty much
any format you like. HTML would certainly be one of those formats. (And
for guys like me who live and die by grep, even *I* would buy into an
xmlrfcgrep program that provided grep functionality against "XML-RFC-DTD"
files.)

> and only there's a text version to go with it.

Let me go out on a limb and say "No they shouldn't; only XML submissions
should be allowed."

Now that the shrapnel has stopped whizzing past my head, let me explain
why.

The traditional way of writing RFCs is with nroff, typically using a
minimal subset of the -ms macros. In recent years Microsoft Word (along
with other WYSIAWYG software) has invaded the traditional UNIX typesetting
tools workspace to a certain degree (in the context of writing
IETF-related documents). Regardless, other than the occasional Loonie who
formats this stuff purely by hand, we are all already using markup
languages to create these documents. That being the case, XML isn't a new
way of writing these documents, it's just a different one. The current RFC
DTD isn't complicated, and -- as long as it's kept simple[*] -- I don't
see any excuse for people not to use it. Then again, I've been using troff
exclusively for 20 years now, to the point where I can _almost_ see the
consistency of its syntax ...

While there isn't a whole lot I *can't* accomplish in troff, my experience
with using it to write I-Ds suggests that those documents are so
structured that I really just want to write a simple set of macros
tailored for that task. I shudder to think what the Word crowd goes
through in this regard. WYS might be WYG, but the path between the two (in
my very limited experience) is one whose mana will suck the very sanity
from your living soul.

There is no argument to be made against the suitability of XML as the
canonical format for authoring RFCs and drafts. Writing the raw XML might
not be pleasant, but neither is writing raw 'roff (or MS Word) for many
people. Let's embrace this as an opportunity. If we can get the marketing
twits to concentrate on selling GUI XML RFC authoring tools, we just might
be able to distract them from contaminating the actual working groups.

--lyndon

[*] The critical aspect is that the DTD *must* be kept simple. If the DTD
evolves into a Turing machine with Perl-like syntax we can just
acknowledge that it's time to shut down the IETF and go home. I cling to
the forlorn hope that people still know - and more importantly,
understand - what the 'E' in IETF stands for.

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 13:11:53 +0300

> alternative copies in the ASCII text, PDF, and HTML formats.

Ok. This would be fine. My point was that I as a user (and
particularly the large groups of other users out there) are
unwilling to do anything extra to read their RFCs. But if
the secretariat already publishes the important formats, its
fine!

> Let me go out on a limb and say "No they shouldn't; only XML submissions

Well, this would be quite good too. In fact, it would help the
RFC editor automatization process as well -- and they could
concentrate more on the real issues, such as talking to IANA
or figure out cross references.

Thinking some more... I'd *love* to have this. Anyone who
opposes?

> understand - what the 'E' in IETF stands for.

Extension?

--Jari

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From: Lyndon Nerenberg {VE6BBM} <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 04:34:51 -0600

>>  I cling to

existential
ebulliently
excellent
engineering
experienced
eccentric

--lyndon (egregious evening emoter)

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From: Andrew Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 07:41:36 -0400

> rendered with a mono-spaced font, fifty years of prior art be damned, eh?)

I'd like to include handy ERD, UML, etc... diagrams in PNG format to 
make the document more readable.

-andy

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From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 07:16:14 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Lyndon Nerenberg <[email-masked]>

> ...

I don't know about shutting down the IETF, but I do know that in
this century you've stated the compelling reason to run screaming
from this set of proposals.

Have you looked at the 250 lines of XML cruft that Microsoft thinks
are required to accompany a 1 word mail message today?

Have you ever glanced at the incredibly bloated and broken HTML
that most HTML mark-up tools produce?

Now recall the galloping freeping creaturism of the last 3 I-Ds you've read.

A "Turing machine with Perl-like syntax" would be incomparably simpler
and cleaner than the result of the 5 years work of the new working
group in the new area.  (What--you don't realize that a new working
group would be required?)

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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From: "Rosen, Brian" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 13:22:21 -0400

Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Hoffman / IMC [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 1:06 PM
> To: Rosen, Brian; [email-masked]'
> Subject: Re: A modest proposal - allow the ID repository to hold xml
> 
> 
> At 6:15 PM -0400 8/27/03, Rosen, Brian wrote:
> >I therefore have a modest proposal:
> >
> >Allow the submission of an xml file meeting the requirements 
> of RFC2629
> >along with the text file (and optional ps file) for an 
> Internet Draft.
> 
> You didn't say what the additional value would be. We know the 
> additional value of a .ps file (drawings that don't translate to 
> ASCII art). What is the value of XML? It certainly isn't 
> searchability or readability.
> 
> --Paul Hoffman, Director

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 15:40:06 -0400

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>>>>> "Jari" == Jari Arkko <[email-masked]> writes:
    Jari> I'd really like to browse most drafts through my browser,
    Jari> jump to sections,  find the references easily etc. And without
    Jari> performing any extra steps by myself.

    Jari> (It may be that this is possible via XML as well -- I'm
    Jari> not expert in XML so I can't tell if its readily supported
    Jari> by everyone's browser without loading lots of DTDs. Does
    Jari> someone know?)

  Directly, maybe in some browsers.

  However, once the XML is there, you can be assured that someone will
run xml2rfc -> HTML on everything and make it available. No reason for the
secretariat to burn disk space there :-)

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From: S Woodside <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 16:03:17 -0400

> understand - what the 'E' in IETF stands for.

Write the schema in Relax NG (RNG). It's joyful, easy-to-use, XML-based 
schema language. :-)

simon

--
simonwoodside.com -- openict.net -- 99% Devil, 1% Angel