From: Scott Bradner <sob(_at_)harvard(_dot_)edu>
note that it is hard for the rfc edior to accept nroff
too often people use their own macro packages which are incompatable
Given the antediluvian, fossilized stability of nroff macros and the very
small number of people in this century who have their own macro packages,
that is a very strong statement about likely results of using any mark up
language, including XML.
For example, I guess HTML style sheets are like nroff macros.
I recently dabbled with CSS, and tried to use the sample style sheet
at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/sample.html. Can you guess what
happened when I copied it into my document without changes and asked
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ ?
(That my CSS problem was probably purely my own fault does not
weaken the point.)
also too often people change the text between the time that the iesg
approves of a doc and when then send it to the rfc editor - so the
rfc editor has to check for that
Is that a comment about nroff or delays?
`diff` should work equally well for detecting such changes whether
applied to nroff or readable ASCII.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com