Subject: Re: Writing Internet Drafts on a Macintosh

From: "Robert G. Ferrell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 09:55:19 -0600 (CST)

>just a sec.  traditionally, we have this discussion every six months.  it
>has not been six months yet.

If this trend keeps up, eventually all IETF discussions 
will be centered on this one subject, which, ironically 
enough, has nothing to do with actual engineering.  

Who says the universe has no sense of humor?

;-)

Cheers,

RGF

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:03:05 -0500

> > and that goes for pdf too, given that the irs uses it too :)
> 
> I'd like to see us accept HTML 

Ugh.  Do we have to do this whole thread **again**???

allman

---
Mark Allman -- BBN/NASA GRC -- http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~mallman/

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 09:53:19 -0700 (MST)

> From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>

> ...
> 	re HTML/PDF:   cut&paste?
> 		       text search?
> 		       ease of conversion to other formats?

Many, but certainly not all of the strong advocates for other formats
don't know, understand, or care about doing any of those.

> 	                                   ...  And there is nothing
> 	preventing one from taking the authoritative archive and
> 	doing the conversion to foramt'o'the day. A number of folks
> 	have done so.  But the authoritative base is still and should
> 	remain (for now) ASCII.

Remember when Postscript was the fad for new, replacement RFC format?
Where would we be now if the Postcript advocates had carried the day
in the late 1980's?

There's another important, if politically incorrect fact.  It's a very
good thing to try to accomodate readers of RFC's by converting RFC's from
ASCII to the fad format of the day, but something else to bend over
backwards for I-D authors.  An I-D author who cannot easily produce an
ASCII I-D, whether from scratch or from some other format converted to
ASCII, will not have checked (not to mention read) RFC's or other documents
relevant to the issue addressed by the I-D, and is unable to produce an
I-D worth making reading.  In other words, than an I-D is in ASCII RFC
form is a good initial filter.

I did say that fact is politically incorrect.  I also intentionally
wrote "cannot easily produce" instead of "doesn't want to."

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: "Robert G. Ferrell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:39:36 -0600 (CST)

>these are the same people with archaic browsers and 
>e-mail clients that can't handle recent advances in technology - even to 
>the point of using "dumb" devices that can only handle ASCII?

"On the other hand," he said, drawing himself up to his full height  
and putting on his 'serious' face, "what real sense is there in 
adopting every new technological innovation that comes along, 
merely for the sake of appearing to be "on the cutting edge?  
ASCII is certainly a lot safer than HTML or binary formats 
where embedded malicious code may be quietly nestling. 

As I see it, the purpose of IETF documents is communication 
among professionals and providing easily and widely accessible 
reference materials.  Isn't it a bit arrogant and, more importantly, 
self-limiting of us to assume that only those folks who have access 
to enhanced Web/email capabilities should be included in the 
documentation loop?" He paused for effect, and adjust his glasses.

"Offering different formats merely as an option, however, seems 
perfectly acceptable to me, so long as the concomitant administrative 
overhead is within reason."  Time for his big finale, an oblique 
reference to popular culture.

"This entire thread reminds me of Yogi Berra's most widely attributed  
comment." 

He glanced around the room, eager for the crowd's reaction. No reaction 
was forthcoming, however. 

They were all playing Quake III across their 11MB 802.11 wireless LAN.

Cheers,

RGF

Robert G. Ferrell, CISSP
========================================
 Who goeth without humor goeth unarmed.
========================================

---

From: "James P. Salsman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:53:49 -0800 (PST)

Patrick,

Thank you for your most helpful pointer:

> I recently had my first experience using the setup described by
> Marshall Rose in rfc2629 (Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML) and was
> very pleased. You should be able to create the XML base in Word (or
> whatever) and use the referenced tools to produce both conforming text
> and html from the same base.

The tools referenced (xml2rfc) and the self-documenting rfc2629.*ml 
are presently at:

  http://xml.resource.org/authoring

> If you can't run the tools on your platform there is a website that
> you just submit the XML to and it will generate either text or HTML 
> as output.

  http://xml.resource.org

This system is very elegant, and I think it addresses Vernon Schryver's
astute points on the topic, with which I agree completely except that I 
don't think it is politically incorrect to accomodate "the fad format 
of the day" because there are usually good reasons for popular choices.

Cheers,
James

---

From: Alfonso De Gregorio <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 00:22:27 +0100

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 10:50:36PM -0800, Bora Akyol wrote:

Hi Everyone,

> Also, why isn't HTML an accepted format for Internet Drafts, pretty 
> much everyone on the planet should be able to read an HTML file (even 
> using Lynx on a terminal)?

Honestly, I consider HTML a language not suitable to write Internet Drafts :-)

However, we can support multiple formats while continuing to read our drafts
in txt using SGML.

SGML can make authors more concerned about the way elements work instead of
the way they look. Infact, a SGML processor can render a SGML document to txt 
(our preferred choice), LaTeX, RTF, DVI, info, DOC, HTML etc.

You someone feel this could be useful, I can write a document type definition
(DTD) for RFCs, and a SGML template that use it.

Sincerely,
alfonso