I was wondering if you could tell me something. What would the output of the
p.861 document look like if it were converted from XML to ASCII?
I think the process of documents should have two phases:
1. write, store, transfer, update, manage... , manipulating based on the
logical contents.
2. read, some presentation on devices to make people comprehend.
We read a document on different devices, with different limitations, and
we see different presentation of the documents, but all kinds of the
presentations are based on the contents of the documents. Too make
presentation more effective, we should define a format to write and store
the documents. If the format is defined to be enough good (such as a
well-defined XML DTD for RFCs), the documents encoded in this
format can be easily converted into different kinds of presentation,
to meet the requirements of different people and devices. The process
of convertation can be transparent to the readers. For example, if the
XML DTD and style sheets are defined by IETF, we can get .txt,
.ps, .pdf, .html,... RFCs directly from ietf web and FTP site, while the
authors only compose them according to the defined XML DTD, not
caring about the presentation.
However, certain devices (e.g. pure text readers) still have some
limitations on presentation. For P.861, it seems no way to present it in
pure text format to make people clearly comprehend. This just
proves my opinion: pure text is not suitable for manipulating documents.
Additionally, a goot format of documents greatly ease the work to manipulate
the documents.
I believe that RFCs have a internal format. Documents in this format
are without the page numbers, headers and footers. This format is for
manipulating. The format we see in the published RFCs is only for
reading. Why don't we switch this internal format to XML?
My advice is to: manipulate RFCs in XML/SGML (by carefully
defining a DTD), and automaticlly publish them in every kind
of presentation (by defining different style sheets). This does not
conflict with current situation: txt lovers can still get txt RFCs
from the same location, while others can get html, ps, pdf,... RFCs.
I hated ITU, but because now I can get ITU documents freely,
I don't hate it any more.
Regards,
Wang Xianzhu
RUNWAY Technology
Beijing, China
(This is my last augument about XML.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Wang Xianzhu [mailto:wangxz(_at_)runway(_dot_)cn(_dot_)net]
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 4:13 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Why XML is perferable
to render XML documents to pure text presentation. There will be
^^^^^^^
converters from XML to HTML, ms word, ps, pdf and any other types of
presentation, suitable for any type of readers.
Meanwhile I stick with ASCII, which I can grep, cut & paste.
1. You can easily get a very well-formed ASCII file from a XML file.
2. With XML, you can not only grep, cut & paste, but also manage and process
it.
For example, I can grep XML files for whose level 2 headings containing
the string 'file transfer protocol'. But for ASCII files, this is
impossible, because
1) the computer program does not know where are level 2 headings
2) the string may be split into two lines, grep fails in this situation.
Also I don't think it will be at all practical to drive email
discussions
for ietf drafts if we have to start using XML/HTML/SGML/*ML crap.
BTW, there are RFCs (1125, 1129, etc.) only available in ps format, and
some
provided both text and ps versions. ASCII text is not enough to
describe
information.
Well it worked fine for 2800+ documents and how many today ?
3060+ today, with many ugly figures in '-', '_', 'o', '/', '\' chars, which
is very difficult to read. In XML, you can even search for figures if
we develop unified Internet/flowchart/etc DTDs.
implementations
of tcp/ip protocols running on how many devices ?
I wonder if anyone can write a readable pure text version of ITU-T
P.861.
What P.861 {Objective quality measurement of telephone-band (300-3400 Hz)
speech codecs} has to do with tcp/ip and rfc's ???
Yes, their content of P.861 seems have nothing to do with RFCs.
P.861 is an informational document, like any RFCs. If a RFC face a
similar problem like P.861, I wonder how it can describe it clearly in
pure text.
XML provides a way to describe information in documents, and can be
easily converted to different types of target formats, such as pure text,
pdf, HTML, etc. Again: XML is not for display.
BTW, I hate to pay for ITU documents what are supposed to be public (I
still
remember the years old discussion when they ceased to exist available
for anon ftp)
I hate ITU too. :)
Regards
Jorge.
Regards,
Wang Xianzhu