Subject: RE: Source Format of RFCs

From: Dan Kohn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 16:09:49 -0800

Over a year ago, Eric Raymond put together a quick summary page at
<http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/rfcs-in-html/> describing some of the ideas
from the RFCs-in-HTML list Keith mentioned.  Note that the mailing list
petered out soon afterwards.

In reviewing the page, I have to admit it seems a little dated in that
XML <http://www.w3.org/XML/> seems to offer a lot of additional
structure capability while allowing even better "down-conversion" to
HTML or text (or even, with a little Perl hacking, nroff).  In general,
though, I think XML authoring and viewing tools (not to mention XSL) are
still about 6 to 12 months from maturity and longer from ubiquity, and
so I am not yet convinced that critical mass exists to adopt a new
standard format.

		- dan
--
Daniel Kohn <[email-masked]>
Teledesic LLC
+1-425-602-6222 (voice)   602-0002 (fax)
http://www.teledesic.com

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From: "Eric S. Raymond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 20:29:53 -0500

> petered out soon afterwards.

Yes.  I've been wondering what could be done to revive it.
 
> so I am not yet convinced that critical mass exists to adopt a new

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.  

There's a lot of interesting XML sctivity in the Python community.  The
tools we need might just come out of there.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. 
	-- Ramsey Clark

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From: "Eric S. Raymond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 20:29:53 -0500