The TXT versions do not print on my printer and have not printed
reliably on any printer I have ever owned.
I discovered by accident that, on my machine, simply opening a
text version in Microsoft Word gives a document which prints
properly, page breaks and all. (10 point Courier I think.)
Maybe not a purists' solution, but good enough to allow me to
move on.
Until about 5 years ago I could open an RFC or ID in a simple text editor
and press print. But I no longer have a "simple" editor on my machine.
The closest I have is Microsoft's "Notepad" which defaults to larger fonts and
margins.
It breaks every line into 1 1/2 lines, making the text close to unreadable,
and the printout about 3 times the number of pages.
I use Word sometimes, but I need to do more work.
After forcing the file to be opened in Word,
I have to perform a "select all" and change the font to Courier
and the size to 10. (If I don't change the font to a monospace one
all the artwork is undecipherable.)
Then I have to make the top margin smaller - the default top margin
makes a break just before the footer, so that a print out has every other page
containing only a footer at the top and otherwise blank
(the page break IS understood).
I used to be able to go into page preview mode and fix things up for printing
in a WYSIWYG fashion, but that no longer works in the newer version of Word.
So, the argument that the format we use is future proof is still holding up.
I indeed CAN still print an RFC on my machine,
but it does take a lot of work.
I would not be surprised if with my next machine I would find it impossible
to print correctly using any of the standard utilities provided,
and that I would be forced to write a program to do so.
The machine after that will probably not have any languages I know,
and I hope that the IETF will be able to provide (free of charge)
a viewer with printing option.
Y(J)S
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