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Re: Last Call: 'Proposed Experiment: Normative Format in Addition to ASCII Text' to Experimental RFC (draft-ash-alt-formats)

2006-06-15 10:52:54
I would also observe that there is significant evidence that there is not a real problem here.

It seems to me that if there was a real problem with the graphics, that folks would be publishing RFCs with PS or PDF forms, even if those were not normative. For the thousand RFCs starting with RFC 3000, there are 4 PS and 4 PDF documents. In total, assuming that those are for different documents, that is still less than 1% if those RFCs published in that time period.

I know some folks are vocal that there is a problem.
But, the evidence suggests otherwise.

In contrast, the evidence suggested for judging the experiment is going to be very limited, very subjective, and heavily influenced by the fact that the target are folks who are presumably particularly interested in a positive outcome.

This experiment is a bad idea.
I am sorry that this is not "constructive" input. But sometimes the right answer is "no." We already have provision for people to publish pretty pictures when they think that is helpful. If lots of folks do that, and if we conclude that those PDFs are more useful than the text documents, then we would have something to discuss.

Sure, I hate producing ASCII art. But then, I hate producing document art in any form. The problem is not ASCII. It is finding a good, clean, understandable, way to express ones ideas.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern




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