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Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required

2009-07-09 12:16:06
On Jul 3, 2009, at 08:07, Doug Ewell wrote:

As always when this discussion occurs, there are at least three different issues swirling around:

1.  ASCII-only vs. UTF-8
2. Plain text vs. higher-level formatting, for text flow and readability
3.  Whether it is a good idea to include high-quality pictures in RFCs

There are not the same issue, and it would help combatants on both sides not to mix them up.

I admire the attempt to separate these issues into orthogonal concerns, but I don't think it can succeed.

The common aspect of all these issues is the question of whether our archival format should A) continue to be limited to a string of ASCII characters formatted for printing with a fixed-width font, or B) if it should be expanded to include a document archival format that can preserve font, style and figures.

There is a related but separable topic of discussion once option B) is open for debate: what precisely should be the set of primary natural languages used in IETF documents? Should it continue to be English only? I'd very much prefer to see *that* discussion vigorously deferred while our archival format continues to be the largest practical obstacle to multilingualism. I believe there are no reasonable candidates for archival formats that can preserve font, style and figures without also providing for localization.

I don't know where the argument "don't help authors prepare I-Ds using the tools of their choice, unless they are open-source" fits into this picture.

Compared to the previous two issues, this one is just not so much important.


--
james woodyatt <jhw(_at_)apple(_dot_)com>
member of technical staff, communications engineering

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