*>
*> -->
*> --> "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
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