In the cart before the horse department Phillip wrote:
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.
The IETF is the *Internet* Engineering Task Force not some document
formatting engineering task force. We don't have to lead with our chins
here. If some open standard is accepted for document processing, I'm
happy to use it once it is clear that it will stand the test of time. I
certainly wouldn't bet the bank on the current OpenDoc standard.
In the meantime I will settle for seeing the IETF reinvent itself by
continuing to produce relevant work in the areas we claim expertise.
That generally involves lots of ones and zeros on wires, which can
easily be represented and described in English with ASCII. And if
someone wants to translate that ASCII into any other language, I say
"Have at it!" Or... if someone wants to develop source in any other
language and then translate into English, fine with me as long as we
understand that the English is normative in the end.
Eliot
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