On 16-jun-2006, at 22:39, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
You mean that we should update the current medieval print format
to take advantage of the best technology available to the Victorians?
Why go to all that trouble to create infrastructure to support an
obsolete document format when we can get all the infrastructure
required to support a modern, open format that delivers
professional results for free?
Moreover there is a much higher probability that third party tools
will support a common W3C/IETF format than an IETF only format.
Don't diss medieval archiving: that stuff is still around. That's
very different for a plethora of more modern ways to archive stuff,
especially in the digital domain. (Ever looked at a two year old fax?)
When I was 16 years old, I wrote a text editor in BASIC that would
probably have allowed me to edit RFCs. In the intervening decades I
went to software engineering school, but I'm pretty sure that unless
I want to dedicate one or more years of my life to it, I can't write
something that can decode and display, let alone edit, PDF.
Having RFCs only available in a format encumbered with the complexity
and ambiguity of PDF (I'm not even mentioning patent/copyright/
trademark issues) is just asking for trouble. And there is absolutely
no need for it: it's possible NOW to create a pretty PDF version when
you write an RFC. You just have to create an ASCII version too. Is
that such a big deal that we're willing to risk losing the ability to
access our past work?
Although common wisdom tells us that a picture is worth a thousand
words, I doubt that greatly in the area of technical documents: yes,
they can be useful but they can also be misleading. The text should
be able to stand on its own. I'm not opposed to having images
attached to (ASCII) RFCs (but not in PDF or another complex format!)
but I don't really see the need.
This goes double for formulas: those can be rewritten into pseudo
code, which generally makes them more accessible to boot.
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