Theodore Tso wrote:
On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 09:00:48AM +0300, Yaakov Stein wrote:
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.
There may be specific deficiencies with specific operating systems
that no longer no how to print ASCII documents, in which case IETF
might need to provide (or at least point to) a viewer/editor with a
printing option. As it stands today there are plenty of simple text
editors that are available for Windows; they aren't provided by the OS
provider, so they're not installed by default, but they certainly
exist --- and, due to the simplicity of the RFC series' archival
format, they certainly would not be hard to provide.
While I participated IETF Meetings in 1995-98, I often used "pstools" to
create printed copies (2-up) of RFCs and Internet Drafts for reading
while travelling and during meetings (didn't have a laptop).
I used a wrapping perl-script because it was a little difficult
to cope with some documents (varying page lengths and no page feed
control character, plus occasionally Word-corrupted quote characters).
Maybe the IETF could provide a conversion page on their Web-Server
that can convert RFCs and Internet Drafts on the fly from their
original ASCII-form into page-formatted PDF files, something like
you post an URL in a Form, it gives you back a PDF.
On my office PC, I use the same simple text-editor for reading
RFCs and I-Ds that I use for EMail/C/Perl/shell/config, and I
do appreciate the original ASCII format of IETF documents.
The ASCII format significantly facilitates quoting paragraphs
from the document in Email discussion, and that is particularly
helpful during development/discussion of I-Ds.
-Martin
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf