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Re: Why the normative form of IETF Standards is ASCII

2010-03-11 20:13:26
Hi,

First, my excuses to Martin for the cheap shot below.  But I really
couldn't help myself, as hist posting illustrates the power of one of
the potential alternatives to ASCII (as a presentation format for drafts
and RFCs) so well...

On 2010-03-12 01:11 Martin Rex said the following:
Actually, the page breaks _are_ useful.  Like when referencing specific
parts/paragraph in a document with an URL in a long section, e.g.
   http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5246#page-36
which contains the message flow of a full TLS handshake.
And that message flow is just perfect in ASCII arts.

<cheap_shot>
    I find it extremely suggestive that to make his point (in defence of
    the ASCII format), the author of the quoted message snippet above
    sent a pointer to a HTML-converted version of an RFC, which includes
    anchors which makes it possible to refer to individual pages (and
    sections)...
</cheap_shot>

I really think that we should decide to move beyond the current pure-ASCII
presentation format, whether it be a constrained HTML or PDF-A (which are
the primary serious contenders as alternatives to pure ASCII as presentation
format that I see).

Note that I'm not specifying how to constrain the presentation-format HTML
here, only that we'd probably want a presentation format which is more
constrained than just 'any' HTML if we choose HTML as the vehicle for
the presentation of drafts and RFCs.

Focusing on the constrained HTML alternative, it could give us the richness
of unicode and all the abilities of HTML which we'd want to use, including
the ability to add internal and external links at the appropriate places
in a document.  Constraining it could protect us against undesirable
excesses and variations.

I believe a significant number of us are currently using the HTMLized
versions (from http://tools.ietf.org/html/) of drafts and RFCs as the
preferred reading format, because of the links it provides; if we were
to move to a (constrained) HTML format as the standard presentation format
for drafts and RFCs we could add other goodness like re-flowable paragraphs
which would make the documents more accessible on small-screen devices and
for those who prefer larger font size for readability.

A move to a richer standardised presentation format than ASCII would only
be sensible if the appropriate tools were available for generation of that
format; but we really need to decide that we want to move forward with
this first; otherwise we won't have many who are willing to sit down and
contribute time and energy on the necessary tools.


Best regards,

        Henrik
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