Subject: Re: Source Format of RFCs

From: "Mark D. Anderson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 08:46:49 -0800

FYI, the w3c seems to be working on this problem; there is an early
version of a dtd for a specification format in xml, at:
http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/06/xmlspec-report-19980910.htm
There is an archived discussion list at:
http://cgi.w3.org/Archives/Public/spec-prod/1998JanMar/0000.html
There are some stale thoughts at:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/SGML/spec-mgmt

They currently have *not* yet published dsssl or xsl sheets to work
with such an xml format.

I'm not involved in the w3c; just interested in the problem.

-mda

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric S. Raymond <[email-masked]>
To: Dan Kohn <[email-masked]>; 'Keith Moore' <[email-masked]>; Bruce Balden <[email-masked]>
Cc: Dunlap, Randy <[email-masked]>; [email-masked] <[email-masked]>; 'Rohit Khare' <[email-masked]>; 'Adam Rifkin'
<[email-masked]>
Date: Tuesday, December 01, 1998 5:46 PM
Subject: Re: Source Format of RFCs

>I'm still interested in this problem, Dan.  I agree that XML is looking
>good for this purpose.  I'll make it an action item of mine to send a notice
>to the list when it looks like there's a stanard. open-source XML toolkit
>to work with.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 12:34:34 -0500

Folks who want to promote XML as an RFC format have the same problem
as people who want to promote other formats - you have to get the
tools in the hands of the people writing and reading RFCs, and convince 
them that they'd rather use those tools than what they're currently using.

A year or two ago, I picked HTML as the most likely candidate for 
a new RFC format because tools to produce (lousy) HTML were already 
widely available.  When tools to produce XML are widely available, 
it might also make a good candidate.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 12:34:34 -0500

Keith