Subject: RE: Baby Steps (was RE: Alternative formats for IDs)

From: "Ash, Gerald R \(Jerry\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 11:34:34 -0600

> > Unless the IESG has changed the rules while I was not looking,
> > it has been permitted to post I-Ds in PDF in addition to ASCII
> > for some years. 

> BUT the pdf is not allowed to be normative. 

Right.  The ASCII version is the only normative format.  Furthermore,
all diagrams, no matter how complex in the PDF version, must be
converted to ASCII stick figures in the normative ASCII version.  There
are no tools I'm aware of to aid that conversion, and in many cases much
is lost in the conversion.

> Changing that rule alone would be sufficient to allow modern
> graphics to be called up in normative texts.

Agreed.

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 16:45:41 +0100

>>graphics to be called up in normative texts.

It would, and the same would apply to mathematical formulae.

As a matter of fact, the relatively unmodern RFC 1119 that John mentioned
does use some graphics and mathematics that would be annoying to
code in ASCII. We can certainly ask the question whether that is a big
enough benefit to be worth the cost.

    Brian