Subject: RE: RFCs should be distributed in XML (Was: Faux Pas --web public ation in proprietary formats at ietf.org

From: "Gray, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:41:51 -0200

Phillip,

	And, with text versions, you can either require authors to
outline the relevant changes (who really cares that page numbers
have changed from one version to the next?) - as many Working 
Groups do - or you de-()roff the text and run "diff" to see what
the detailed changes were.

	Us un-trusting types occasionally do both.  Because it is
possible for accidents to happen with change bars, the only way
to positively determine what has changed from one version to the
next with Word is to accept all the changes in the new version
(removing all the change bars) and use Merge-Compare Documents
to re-insert them.

	With Word, you can sometimes spend a lot of time trying to
determine what actually changed in a complex figure only to give up
because - whatever the change was - you can't find it.  Remember
that Word puts a change bar beside entire figures when anything
has changed in them.  Maybe a line has changed color, or maybe an
object has been moved over a pixel's width - or maybe you keep
seeing (or not seeing) something that has been removed (or added)
because you expect to see it (or not see it).

	We could argue all day in favor of a variety of different
tools.  Frankly, a slight variation of current practice would -
I strongly suspect - be good enough.  Currently, you can refer
to figures in a PDF version of a draft or RFC as long as the
reference is non-normative.

	We may feel that this is problematic if we're having trouble
producing an acceptable figure using ASCII art in a document that 
is intended to be normative.  However, if the descriptive text in 
a normative document is sufficiently stand-alone that a figure
referenced in a PDF document is intended for illustrative purposes
only (I think we might be able to agree that should be the case),
then I believe it should be acceptable to include the PDF version
as a non-normative reference.

	As for requiring another format, that strikes me as asking 
the majority to pay the price for the minority. I've yet to find 
anything representable in two dimensions that cannot be produced
in PDF. PDF readers are available for free and compatible with at
least every platform I've ever worked on. And if an author cannot
get help in producing PDF format if they need to and they are not 
able to do so themselves, then I have to ask why not...

--
Eric

--> -----Original Message-----
--> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
--> On Behalf Of Hallam-Baker, Phillip
--> Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 4:43 PM
--> To: [email-masked]; Ted Faber
--> Cc: [email-masked]
--> Subject: RE: RFCs should be distributed in XML (Was: Faux 
--> Pas --web publication in proprietary formats at ietf.org
--> 
--> In OASIS the de facto document markup during the 
--> preparation of the documents is Word. The principle reason 
--> for this is that Word allows for changes to the document to 
--> be highlighted.
--> 
--> The ability to see the differences to the document is 
--> critical if you want people to read it thoroughly more than once.
--> 
--> > -----Original Message-----
--> > From: [email-masked] 
--> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf 
--> > Of Juergen Schoenwaelder
--> > Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 3:25 AM
--> > To: Ted Faber
--> > Cc: [email-masked]
--> > Subject: Re: RFCs should be distributed in XML (Was: Faux 
--> Pas --web 
--> > publication in proprietary formats at ietf.org
--> > 
--> > On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 09:45:00AM -0800, Ted Faber wrote:
--> >  
--> > > WRT revision control software on I-Ds, I think it's an
--> > excellent idea,
--> > > but authors should use whatever they agree on.  IMHO, the
--> > IETF doesn't
--> > > need to provide a system.  CVS vs. RCS vs. subversion vs. 
--> > $DIETY knows
--> > > what is too much of a mess to wade into for the benefit.
--> > 
--> > I strongly disagree. I fact, I would love if the IETF 
--> could settle on 
--> > a system and in the long term, even the RFC editor would 
--> just use it.
--> > It will make my life much easier if I do not have to 
--> manually track 
--> > changes applied by the RFC editor to put them back into 
--> my version 
--> > controlled repository so that the editorial fixes are not 
--> lost when 
--> > the ID is up for revision.
--> > 
--> > It seems that the open source community much better 
--> understands what 
--> > it means to edit documents and how important it is to 
--> even agree on 
--> > style guidelines in order to be efficient. The IETF is 
--> really in the 
--> > stone age as an organization in this respect.
--> > 
--> > Perhaps the reason is that those who still know how to write and 
--> > maintain code have become the minority in the IETF.
--> > 
--> > /js
--> > 
--> > -- 
--> > Juergen Schoenwaelder		    International 
--> University Bremen
--> > <http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/>	    P.O. Box 750 561, 
--> > 28725 Bremen, Germany
--> > 
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--> > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
--> > 
--> > 
--> 
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