Subject: Re: An I-D experiment (Re: HTML better for small PDAs)

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 14:37:39 -0700 (MST)

> From: "Marshall T. Rose" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Dave Crocker" <[email-masked]>

> ...
> > Until then, it is not appropriate to change the massively-stable base that
> > forms the encoding rules for RFCs.  XML as an adjunct is fine.  As a
> > primary form for RFCs?  Not yet.
>
> err, i don't recall anyone proposing this. if you're going to argue against
> something, first make sure that someone proposed it, ok?

There have been several proposals recently and many over the years to
replace the current encoding rules for RFCs.  Check some of the recent
threads at http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/threads.html

As far as I can tell, no one who has ever used an RFC to design or
implement anything has made such a proposal, but that does not mean
that the proposals are safe to ignore.  For one reason, most IETF
participants have not and will never use an RFC to design or implement
anything, unless your use of those words coincides with those who write
about "designing and implementing TCP/IP in the enterprise."  I bet
that if a vote were held today, and if not only "legacy Internet
programmers" but all subscribers to this mailing list voted, ASCII
would finish behind HTML, MS Word, XML, UNICODE, and perhaps others.

Yes, I realize voting is forbidden and this is a good example why.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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From: "Marshall T. Rose" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 15:41:08 -0800

> threads at http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/threads.html

blah, blah, blah. i'm familiar with this thread, and the thread that pops up
every 6 months or so... but where is the actual "proposal". all i see is the
usual "wouldn't it be nice if" and never anything concrete. if someone
actually produces a proposal, then we can discuss it or nuke it.

perhaps a more useful mode of discussion would be to determine what criteria
should be used for the rfc publication process and whether incremental
improvements are possible, independent of encoding changes.

/mtr

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:40:36 +1100

>improvements are possible, independent of encoding changes.

egad, what a constructive suggestion.  worthy of starting a new thread.

I would like to see a small set of accepted "source" forms, with automated 
tools for converting them into a small set of presentation forms.

The current RFC publication process has some astonishing delays apparently 
due to the process including a conversion of the source text to 
nroff.  Eliminating that step, or at least automating its equivalent, could 
only help.

d/

ps.  I am strongly hopeful about long-term use of XML.  My concerns are 
only about the stage of market development, and as I said, it is 
progressing nicely.

----------
Dave Crocker   <mailto:[email-masked]>
Brandenburg InternetWorking   <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel: +1.408.246.8253;   fax: +1.408.273.6464

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: 11 Mar 2001 22:08:46 -0800

> only about the stage of market development, and as I said, it is

Just to throw out another random data point from someone who tends to rant
against XML, my primary objection to XML is as an original source format.
I find it very author-hostile due to the verbose tags, the need for rather
a lot of markup in the document to take full advantage of the capabilities
of the language, and the use of ASCII text for the tags as well as the
content (which makes it hard to visually distinguish between content and
markup).  HTML has all of the same problems.  The editors tend to be large
black-box sorts of applications without much real control over the result
and heavily slanted towards people who adore GUIs and compose documents
with lots of pointing and clicking.

What would bring me around to accepting the idea of XML as a standardized
document format is better converters from markup languages that are either
author-friendly (something like POD, SDF, or texinfo) or old enough that
people already know them quite well (like LaTeX or *roff).  I've seen a
lot more things like that recently than I had before, which is hopefully a
sign that the use of XML is expanding beyond the people who, due to
whatever strange mental quirk :), actually like SGML syntax.  Once those
converters are pretty common and reasonably solid, I think XML will be a
much easier sell.

It's certainly pretty clear to me that manually paginated ASCII text with
embedded "page headers" that pop up in the middle of the content when
being read with a pager isn't ideal as an archival format.

The best thing people who are in favor of XML for RFCs could do in my view
is to write a few simple converters from much simpler languages that could
handle the average RFC.  (Even the very simple capabilities of POD are
adequate for quite a few RFCs.)  Then the people who are just trying to
describe a protocol and don't want the document markup getting in their
way can use something simple and the people who are trying to communicate
complex information that needs a lot of semantic markup can use something
with more expressive power.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>