Subject: RE: XML2RFC submission (was Re: ASCII art)

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:13:48 -0800

XML2RFC submission would be based on an IETF standard, and I understand
that many will find that attractive. However, for me, this is
problematic. 

An interesting part of the current text format is that it is defined in
a very simple way: so many lines, so many columns, that's about it.
Compare that to an XML grammar: we define lines and lines of rules,
attributes, sub attributes, and their expected meaning. 

Guess what: we are engineers, and engineers like to tinker. Given that
tinkering with XML grammars is both very easy and very tempting, we can
be pretty sure that there will be many revisions. An XML format is going
to be much less stable than the current status!

As a preparation tool, XML2RFC is probably OK. But it cannot be as
stable and future proof as ASCII text as a "final product" format.

-- Christian Huitema

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:56:11 -0800

> a very simple way: so many lines, so many columns, that's about it.

Christian,

The format has never been that simple and it has gotten increasingly complex 
in recent years.

The format requirements include lines/page, headers, boilerplate, author and 
title information in specific forms, citations in two sets(!), a security 
section, and probably a few more.

ALL OF THESE ARE PART OF THE FORMAT!

Getting them correct is proving increasingly difficult in free-text.  In 
xml2rfc it is vastly easier.

For us to require that a simple ascii representation always be available 
makes quite a lot of sense.  To retain it as the purported input form does 
not, especially when it is not really the input form.

What we really are talking about here is moving from nroff to xml2rfc.

The fact that the nroff component can be kept out of the sight of authors is 
one of the reasons our publication costs are about US$ 1M/year.

d/

-- 

Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
<http://bbiw.net>

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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 18:55:21 +0100

>stable and future proof as ASCII text as a "final product" format.

Full agreement with this. But are not addressed the two problems I rose:

1. the need of larger than 72 characters lines for some drafts.
2. the need to quote authoritative external non-ASCII drafts and texts.

IMHO this only calls for the possibility to quote external texts as 
authorititative. So the issue is not "everything that only way", but 
"this is the default way. When needed otherwise, here is how we proceed".

I note that when a BCP must quote an authoritative external document, 
it is because it applies to usages under that external document, and 
that the concerned users will be able to read it.

Another solution would be to maintain an RFC giving the list of the 
non-IETF documents, the IETF accepts as authoritative (this would no 
prevent an ASCII version for information).

jfc