Subject: Re: I-D file formats and internationalization

From: Robert Sayre <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:17:55 -0500

On 11/30/05, Bob Braden <[email-masked]> wrote:
> This issue has been brought up before and has been on our list of
> things to worry about for at least two years.  But we always run
> aground on the following consideration: there is a substantial
> constituency for have some least-common-denominator form of IETF
> documents, so people can read and print them with even the most
> primitive, old-fashioned (unfashionable?) tools.

I agree that basic console tools should be all that's required to view
the documents. That said, the current format is not easy to print with
proper pagination on Microsoft Windows, so it is not perfect (as you
know). I would characterize the current situation this way:

"Some author names and Unicode protocol parameters are garbled for all
viewers."

I think it's reasonable to shoot for

"Some author names and Unicode protocol parameters are garbled for
some viewers."

> Allowing extended
> character sets for author names seems like a really nice idea to
> the RFC Editor as well, but we see no way to do that and keep the
> LCD.

Hmm. What is the LCD? Is it NetBSD circa 1993? Is it a PDP-11? At what
point does internationalization trump (vociferous?) users of long
obsolete platforms?

> You need some kind of structured document that some people
> won't have the tools to display, search, print, ...  The
> RFC Editor would welcome a way out of this dilemma.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/quickbrown.txt

So, which viewing tools fall over on that text file and need to be
supported? I just tried it in Emacs, where most of the languages
displayed correctly (I don't have East Asian fonts, so I got some
squares), and Firefox displayed all of it correctly.

--

Robert Sayre

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

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---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 13:35:41 +0100

Robert Sayre wrote:

> the current format is not easy to print with proper
> pagination on Microsoft Windows

Last time I tested `dir > prn` on a W2K box it worked,
why would that be different for `type rfc4567.txt > prn` ?

> Hmm. What is the LCD? Is it NetBSD circa 1993? Is it a
> PDP-11?

How about a cell phone or PDA anywhere in the world.  Not
the ideal tool to write I-Ds, but viewing should work.

> At what point does internationalization trump (vociferous?)
> users of long obsolete platforms?

Cheap devices will never support the complete Unicode
repertoire.  Your own browser doesn't:

> I don't have East Asian fonts, so I got some squares

                          Bye, Frank