Subject: Re: Last Call: 'Proposed Experiment: Normative Format in Addition to ASCII Text' to Experimental RFC (draft-ash-alt-formats)

From: Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 08:18:08 -0700

>There is a reason it did not result in change... there were cogent
>arguments against all proposals that were made.

I thought that some of the arguments were just arguments against
change, and some of the arguments did argue for a change in the
experiment but not that the experiment was bad per se.

>How DID it get last called, by the way?

I evaluated the document, the discussion, the feedback from the
stakeholders, and decided that a Last Call would be a good
forcing function to make sure we have a real discussion about it.
I think the idea has promise.

>How will a future implementor know which version is normative?

Presumably, the documents will include a note, something like "This
document is part of an experiment described in RFCnnnn; unlike all other
RFCs, the PDF version of this document is normative".  Thanks for pointing
out that the experiment description forgot to mention that.

>As Joel mentions, this experiment will have a negative impact on
>RFC Editor throughput.

I didn't quite buy Joel's argument.  If the author can generate ASCII
from his source that matches the RFC-Editor's edited ASCII, and then
generates the PDF from the same source, where does the extra verification
come in?

>...and the implications need more mature thought.

If all we get when discussing on the ietf list is knee-jerk reactions,
where is this more mature thought going to come from?

  Bill

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From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:52:39 -0400

I would also observe that there is significant evidence that there is 
not a real problem here.

It seems to me that if there was a real problem with the graphics, 
that folks would be publishing RFCs with PS or PDF forms, even if 
those were not normative.
For the thousand RFCs starting with RFC 3000, there are  4 PS and 4 
PDF documents.  In total, assuming that those are for different 
documents, that is still less than 1% if those RFCs published in that 
time period.

I know some folks are vocal that there is a problem.
But, the evidence suggests otherwise.

In contrast, the evidence suggested for judging the experiment is 
going to be very limited, very subjective, and heavily influenced by 
the fact that the target are folks who are presumably particularly 
interested in a positive outcome.

This experiment is a bad idea.
I am sorry that this is not "constructive" input.  But sometimes the 
right answer is "no."
We already have provision for people to publish pretty pictures when 
they think that is helpful.
If lots of folks do that, and if we conclude that those PDFs are more 
useful than the text documents, then we would have something to discuss.

Sure, I hate producing ASCII art.  But then, I hate producing 
document art in any form.  The problem is not ASCII.  It is finding a 
good, clean, understandable, way to express ones ideas.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:29:21 +0200

Hi,

> But, the evidence suggests otherwise.

Oh, *good* point.

> useful than the text documents, then we would have something to discuss.

Agreed.  Thinking some more about this, the lack of inter-document
links seem to be a complaint that I hear much more often than the
lack of good graphics support.

Regards,

	Henrik

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:42:15 +0200

Henrik Levkowetz schrieb:
> ...
 > ...

I was just thinking about how I'm using RFCs day to day. Answer: usually 
I don't use the ASCII versions at all. Instead, I try to obtain XML 
(RFC2629) versions of them, produce HTML, and use that instead 
(collected at: <http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/>).

Why?

- Readability
- Navigation
- Ability to reference a particular section or paragraph with a URL

...and so on.

Best regards, Julian

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:11:50 +0200

Hi Julian,

> - Ability to reference a particular section or paragraph with a URL

Agreed.  And this is of course also the reason why I went to the effort
of writing and setting up the htmlization mechanism on tools.ietf.org:

Accessing, for any RFC or draft, its name under http://tools.ietf.org/html/
will give you a htmlized version, with at least rudimentary links and
section anchors.  Example: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4510#section-1

And http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/index gives you a htmlized index pointing
to htmlized versions of the RFCs.

It's not as good as having the standard format provide links natively,
though.  I wish it was totally unnecessary.

Regards,

	Henrik

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:56:43 +0200

> section anchors.  Example: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4510#section-1

Oops. I wasn't aware of the anchors for sections. You may want to make 
them hrefs as well so people notice. That is, instead of...:

	<a name="section-1">1</a>

make it

	<a name="section-1" href="#section-1">1</a>

Good stuff!

Best regards, Julian

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From: "Yaakov Stein" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:53:00 +0200

> In total, assuming that those are for different documents, that is
still less than 1% if those RFCs published in that time period.

> But, the evidence suggests otherwise.

I don't understand the logic here.

Of course there are very few PDFs, since they are not normative
and you have to do all the ASCII work anyway.

Face with this requirement, people have several options
1) write partial and/or hard to understand descriptions
2) publish elsewhere
3) patent the ideas and charge us for them
    (it says something about our process if a Government bureaucracy 
    that insists on archaic procedures can handle figures and equations 
    better than we can)
4) give up.

Y(J)S

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From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:58:12 -0400

My reasoning is very simple:
If the ASCII were that unreasonable, and if producing PDF is 
practical, then I would expect some folks to choose to produce the 
PDF even if it is not normative.  A few folks have done so.  VERY few.

I was prompted to look at this aspect of the question by attempting 
to draw a conclusion about the evidence suggested for evaluating the 
experiment.  I found the suggested evaluation criteria awkward.  And 
when I asked myself what would constitute reasonable criteria, it 
seemed to me that the existing evidence was relevant.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern