Subject: RE: objection to proposed change to "consensus"

From: Bob Braden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 10:56:43 -0800 (PST)

*> 
  *> --> 
  *> -->     "I think we have reached substantial agreement on the following 
  *> --> statement:  ASCII text was good enough for my Grandfather, and it's 
  *> --> going to be good enough for my grandchildren.  Please reply to this
  *> --> CfC if you object."
  *> --> 
  *> 

"Are we all in favor of Motherhood and Apple Pie?"  "Well, mostly."

No one (well, the IETF is a big tent, so that's probably too strong...
almost no one) questions the desirability of a better format for
publishing RFCs than pure ASCII text.  This has been the subject of
repeated discussions over the last 20 years.  Will the same discussion
be taking place 20 years from now?  I, for one, certainly hope not.

However, simply wishing we had a better solution is not enough.  We
need to have such a reasonable solution in hand before we agree to
adopt it.  We believe we want vendor neutrality, ubiquity, convenience,
searchability, editability, etc..  The obvious, simple suggestions have
all failed on one criterion or another, and ASCII has continued to be
the best (if flawed) compromise.

For many years, PS and PDF files have been allowed as secondary formats
for RFCs.  (You can find them by searching rfc-index.txt for the
strings 'PS=' and 'PDF=', respectively).  This provision does not
handle things like state diagrams, which are presumably normative.  In
practice, creating the PS/PDF forms has been a major pain, because the
documentswere created by the authors using a wide variety of
different editors and tools.

On the other hand, it does appear that the availability of ASCII
support as a common denominator is decreasing over time.  As has been
observed, some software vendors seem to go out of their way to make
simple ASCII hard to use.  So there is increasing pressure to find
a (truly) better solution.

Bob Braden

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: "Brian Rosen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 17:09:45 -0500

This

>a (truly) better solution.

This is the nut of the output representation problem for me.

Most people who object to changing the output format talk about ASCII as if
it always was the standard, and always will be the standard.  If we were
having this discussion 30 or 35 years ago, we would be discussing whether
ASCII would take over EBCDIC or not.  35 years ago, it would not be clear
that ASCII would survive.  There was a holy war about that.  ASCII did in
fact take over from EBCDIC, but it wasn't always clear that it would.

As Bob points out, we are, in fact, coming to the end of the line for ASCII.
It's not in trouble this year, except that it's pretty damn tough to print
it satisfactorily on the machines most of us have to work with.  I suspect
it will get increasingly difficult to create and edit in the not too distant
future.  That would make it a possible minimum common denominator archive
format, but not a useful reading format.

It's probably true that we can push this problem off another year, but maybe
not, and definitely not for very much longer.

Brian

---

From: Sandy Wills <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 23:15:27 -0500

> not, and definitely not for very much longer.

I think that everyone here is aware of that, which is why we keep coming 
back to it, and will continue to until the agents of change win.  I've 
only been following the IETF for a couple of years now, but this 
discussion seems to come closer to adopting a change every time I see it.

-- 
Unable to locate coffee.
Operator halted.

---

From: grenville armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2006 16:19:49 +1100

For an organisation that, apparently, ought to be stymied and
ineffectual because of its reliance on ASCII, the IETF appears to
have had a remarkably productive run these past 20 years.

Dare I suggest a certain organisational maturity is evidenced by the
IETF's unwillingness to swing with every change in the winds of popular
editing and presentation formats over these 20 years.

gja

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 09:29:32 -0500

>>>>> "Sandy" == Sandy Wills <[email-masked]> writes:

    Sandy> Brian Rosen wrote (about the format issue):
    >> It's probably true that we can push this problem off another
    >> year, but maybe not, and definitely not for very much longer.

    Sandy> I think that everyone here is aware of that, which is why
    Sandy> we keep coming back to it, and will continue to until the
    Sandy> agents of change win.  I've only been following the IETF
    Sandy> for a couple of years now, but this discussion seems to
    Sandy> come closer to adopting a change every time I see it.

And that's what we call building consensus.  It how we conduct our
business and while for things like this it is conservative, it does move.

I do think that if the proponents pull together an experiment, we may
find that within two years, we have a proposal that can get consensus.