Is there anything in the IESG governing rules that requires any
physical presence at a particular location in order to accomplish
any IESG tasks?
I don't know of anything explicit in the rules, but as a practical matter
it is essential that IESG members be present at most IETF meetings.
The reason is simple: The IESG is composed of Area Directors, and a key Area
Director responsibility is to assist and manage the various Working Groups in
their area. While it is true that much or even most Working Group activity
takes place on mailing lists, there's no substitute for F2F meetings in order
to accomplish some tasks. And the Area Directors would be seriously remiss if
they weren't a part of this activity.
I think the IETF took a wrong turn when the first PostScript RFC
was published, because that is sort of hard on those blind persons
who might want to participate.
I'm not fond of PostScript RFCs either, but I think this overstates the case
considerably. The primary form of all RFCs was and is plain text; PostScript
and PDF are secondary formats.
I also think the term "fad" can be applied to PostScript RFCs. I just checked,
and there are a whopping total of 46 of them out of the thousands of RFCs that
have been published. The first PostScript RFC appeared in November 1991, and
since May 1996 there have only been 4 of them out of roughly 1000 RFCs
published.
I'm all in favor of UTF-8, though. I can imagine wanting to refer
to the International Phonetic Alphabet in an Internet Draft, but I
don't want to depend on graphics lost on the blind.
We try very hard not to have such dependencies.
Ned