But there is a teensy inconsistency in an argument that goes 'we must
have plaintext for accessibility' then ignores the language and
character set issues as unimportant.
The real reason to change the RFC format is that the IETF needs to make
a visible sign that it is capable of institutional change. A lot has
happened in the past three years, there has been a significant turnover
in IETF management. The old boys club (and it was mostly boys) has been
largely broken up. The IAB and IESG are now subject to de-facto term
limits.
Institutions that do not constantly renew and re-invent themselves
become obsolete. The IETF is a technology organization, if its
communications tell the world that it is wedged in the 1960s it will be
very difficult for it to be relevant in the modern Internet which has
over a billion users.
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On
Behalf Of Dave Aronson (re IETF)
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 8:20 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: ASCII art
JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [mailto:jefsey(_at_)jefsey(_dot_)com] writes:
> This is here where however we have a real practical
problem. Only > standards and procedures written in English
can be authoritative and > Drafts needs to be designed using
the ASCII charsets. This is > acceptable when only English
speaking engineers and reading users are > concerned. This
represents less than 1/4 of the world population.
But the entire world population isn't all equally involved in
designing and running the Internet, or for that matter even
using it. (Egalitarians may claim they SHOULD be, but since
they AREN'T for now, and changing languages is IMHO extremely
unlikely to change that, we can ignore that for now.)
English is the "lingua franca" of the modern world, so to
speak. Therefore, to paraphrase Churchill, English is the
worst possible language for Internet protocol documentation,
except for all the others.
-Dave
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf