Subject: Re: ASCII art

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 11:07:52 -0800

On Nov 21, 2005, at 7:05 AM, Paul Hoffman wrote:

> As others have pointed out on this thread, the ASCII art in IETF  
> specs is (or should be) optional to implementers. The corollary is:  
> why bother to go to a format that uses something other than ASCII  
> art, if it is an optional component? Other than prettiness, what is  
> the advantage for our intended audience of protocol developers?

The advantage is that you can correctly represent words which come  
from languages other than English.

In terms of accessibility, I advance the hypothesis that validated  
html-strict or even html-transitional is at this point in history  
*more* generally accessible than ASCII.  I call it a hypothesis  
because I can't off the top of my head think of an experiment to  
validate/falsify it. -Tim

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