On Nov 21, 2005, at 5:30 PM, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:
At 16:05 21/11/2005, Paul Hoffman wrote:
At 9:54 AM +0100 11/21/05, Julien(_dot_)Maisonneuve(_at_)alcatel(_dot_)com
wrote:
The IETF is probably the ONLY meaningful organisation in the
world that insists on using ascii-only specifications. Any
rationalization of that practise should try to explain why we are
so exceptional before embarking on specious arguments on the
relative merits of writing specs in morse code to improve design
simplicity.
We are so exceptional because all of our old standards can be
implemented from as-is, without any possibly-lossy conversion.
Standards organizations that used, for example, Microsoft Word
version 2 for the PC, as their base document format, have had to
convert their documents multiple times for current users to be
able to read them. That conversion is sometime clean; often, it
involves (lossy) humans reformatting text and pictures.
As others have pointed out on this thread, the ASCII art in IETF
specs is (or should be) optional to implementers. The corollary
is: why bother to go to a format that uses something other than
ASCII art, if it is an optional component? Other than prettiness,
what is the advantage for our intended audience of protocol
developers?
This is not to say that all RFCs do just fine with ASCII art. We
have non-standards documents, which we want the outside world to
read, that look silly with the current formatting restrictions. We
live with projecting that visual clumsiness, as geeks often do.
I understand this. But it restricts RFC to the sole English (ASCII)
language.
Translating RFC as an authoritative text is therefore impossible.
and crossing borders with multilanguage support should be the most
important approach.
just my 2 cents :-)
jfc
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