Subject: Graphic I-Ds and RFCs (Was: RE: RFCs In PDF Format?)

From: "Flanigan, Bill" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:19:39 -0500

Hello Ted,

	Closely reading and sending off detailed comments concerning a large
number of I-Ds over the past month or so, has led me to conclude (again)
that MOST IF NOT ALL authors can not meet your standard of "express(ing) it
clearly in English prose"!  Unless we hire a herd of English majors to
translate these complex and complicated technical documents into readable
English, Dick-and-Jane illustrations and graphics are about the only
recourse I can think of.  Let's face it:  our primary sense is vision, and
few of us technologists can really write well (and avoid an over abundance
of geekSpeak).  (I'm ignoring, for now, deliberate obfuscation which is also
part of the problem.)   
	If anything, illustrations might cause authors to revise their text,
since they may often find that they are unable to illustrate what they have
written.  Then there are the endless list threads that may be the result of
readers not being able TO SEE what authors are trying to get across.
Finally (but not leastly) we might to able to get implementations right the
second time because vendors and integrators would be able TO ENVISION what
the spec says (and doesn't say).

Best regards,
Bill

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
William F. Flanigan, Jr., Ph.D.       Voice:           (703) 681-2318
Defense Information Systems Agency      Fax:           (703) 681-2814 
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> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Theodore Y. Ts'o [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Tuesday, December 01, 1998 7:48 PM
> To:	Thomas Dineen
> Cc:	[email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked];
> [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked];
> [email-masked]
> Subject:	Re: RFCs In PDF Format?
> 
	[snip]

> With very few exceptions (the NTP RFC being the only one that comes to
> mind), if you can't express it clearly in English prose, and instead
> have to rely on a graphic, you probably are thinking fuzzily about the
> subject, and should think harder about it before publishing the
> standard, since otherwise the standard itself may be ambiguous.  
> 
	[snip]

> 						- Ted

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 12:43:24 -0500

Nobody disputes that illustrations are useful.  The question is whether 
it's worthwhile to use format XYZ for RFCs, given the various costs
involved.  

Part of the problem is that once you move away from ASCII text, you 
split the "market" - none of the other formats, with the possible 
exception of HTML, are widely used enough by the diverse interests
within IETF to be good candidates.  This might change in the future,
of course, but for the time being our choices are limited.

Keith

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 12:43:24 -0500

Keith

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From: Kent Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:56:26 -0800

> of course, but for the time being our choices are limited.

How does one do illustrations with just html?

-- 
Kent Crispin, PAB Chair			"No reason to get excited",
[email-masked]			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

---

From: Kent Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:56:26 -0800

---

From: "John W. Noerenberg" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 11:11:39 -0800

> of geekSpeak).  (I'm ignoring, for now, deliberate obfuscation which is also

There's nothing prohibiting authors from adopting this technique when 
they are trying write the prose.  I'm for anything that promotes 
clarity in what is written.  But clarity implies it is also 
understandable by the reader -- in a form that is easily accessible, 
which is what brings is back to ASCII, and all the horrors (<grin>) 
of converting those pictures into ASCII art.

john noerenberg
[email-masked]
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  no matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever
  possible to find some path to redemption
  -- Charles Frazier, "Cold Mountain", Vintage Books, 1997
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: "John W. Noerenberg" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 11:11:39 -0800

john noerenberg
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 15:41:57 -0500

> How does one do illustrations with just html?

<pre>
     +--------------------------+
     |  Insert ascii art here   |
     +--------------------------+
</pre>

Never overlook the obvious low-tech solution ;)

-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 15:41:57 -0500

<pre>

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 13:26:06 -0800

At 12:43 PM 12/2/98 -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
>within IETF to be good candidates.

I wanted to avoid this discussion, but I keep seeing "HTML" and "XML"
suggested.

Neither HTML or XML is a graphics format. They will give us better
formatting for printing, but not pictures. I believe that all we *need* (if
we need anything additional) is pictures, not nicer formatting. 

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

---

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 13:26:06 -0800

--Paul Hoffman, Director

---

From: Kent Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:01:26 -0800

> we need anything additional) is pictures, not nicer formatting. 

That, of course, was the point of my question about how you do 
illustrations with html...

It has been suggested that gif/jpeg/etc images would be included via 
img tags.  It occurs to me that with gif or jpeg we could do away 
html, text, word, and all other formats, and simply have a graphic 
image of the document.  Imagine the problems that would solve...

---

From: Kent Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:01:26 -0800

---

From: Tripp Lilley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 17:11:57 -0500 (EST)

> we need anything additional) is pictures, not nicer formatting. 

Actually, we've been having two related discussions. The question of
adding better pictures to RFCs prompted some discussion of moving to a
more structured format in general. Underneath that heading, we talked a
little bit about gains that would give us in being able to present
multiple encodings of images. You are precisely correct in that neither
will give us better images. They offer a doorway to better images, though.

I suspect that, as soon as people start moving from the ietf thread over
to the [email-masked] thread, we'll talk quite a bit about how to
handle the specific problem of images in the documents. I have a few
ideas, but have refrained from posting them here in the interests of
letting the list settle back down to flame wars between the kooks and the
baited :-) I'm not planning on posting them in exhaustive detail until
there's some more traffic over on the other list.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tripp Lilley, Innovative Workflow Engineering, Inc. ([email-masked])
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" -- Linus's Law

---

From: Tripp Lilley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 17:11:57 -0500 (EST)

---

From: Steve Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 18:27:50 -0500

> illustrations with html...

PGML or VML.  See http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Activity.

Regards,

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Steven L. Blake                  <[email-masked]>
RTP Development Lab                    (919)468-8466 x232
Torrent Networking Technologies        www.torrentnet.com

---

From: Steve Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 18:27:50 -0500

Regards,

---

From: Merton Campbell Crockett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 15:46:08 -0800 (PST)

> > How does one do illustrations with just html?

<BLOCKQUOTE>
   <PRE STYLE=font-weight: bold;>
       +--------------------------+
       |  Insert ascii art here   |
       +--------------------------+
   </PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>

> Never overlook the obvious low-tech solution ;)

Let's indent it from both margins and make the artwork stand out from the
rest of the text by increasing the font weight.

Merton Campbell Crockett
GTE Government Systems

---

From: Merton Campbell Crockett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 15:46:08 -0800 (PST)

<BLOCKQUOTE>

Merton Campbell Crockett
GTE Government Systems

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 22:48:21 -0800

>we need anything additional) is pictures, not nicer formatting. 

you are correct, of course, but I thought HTML allowed one to import a GIF
or JPEG file, and to build a table? I think this is what is being referred
to as "pictures".

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998 22:48:21 -0800

---

From: "Martin J. Duerst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:40:39 +0900

> > How does one do illustrations with just html?

There is one problem with ASCII art:
On systems that have inherited problems from ISO 646, it's not always
readable. As an example, a backslash, important component of a lot of
ASCII art, shows up as a Yen symbol in a large part of the Japanese
systems.

Regards,   Martin.

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, World Wide Web Consortium
#-#-#  mailto:[email-masked]   http://www.w3.org

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From: "Martin J. Duerst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:40:39 +0900

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: "Martin J. Duerst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 06:20:13 +0900

> image of the document.  Imagine the problems that would solve...

But that would make it unreadable to many blind people, who are
very well served by ASCII, and quite well with *reasonable* HTML.

Regards,   Martin.

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From: "Martin J. Duerst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 06:20:13 +0900

Regards,   Martin.