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Re: Why the normative form of IETF Standards is ASCII

2010-03-18 14:26:00
On 18 mrt 2010, at 2:43, Richard Barnes wrote:

+1

Making the XML normative would be an abomination.

The XML in itself can't be interpreted by a human to the level needed to create 
a compliant implementation, although it deceptively looks like maybe it could. 
Of course human readability also doesn't exist for pretty much anything other 
than text or the simplest of HTML, in itself this isn't a show stopper.

But there is no standard way of converting xml2rfc into something that humans 
can interpret unambigously. Practically, the only way to do this is with the 
xml2rfc tool, which is non-standard, only partially documented and very hard to 
run for most people. There have also been times during which the released 
version was unable to convert the XML files that were actually being used 
inside the IETF.

And of course there are no existing RFC for which there is an xml2rfc XML file 
that you can run through xml2rfc and obtain the exact ASCII version of that 
RFC. Older RFCs are formatted in ways which are completely incompatible with 
xml2rfc, so it would be impossible to have all RFCs be available in one format 
if XML is adopted for future RFCs.

If we really want to do something in this space first of all we need to agree 
on the problem, then on the requirements and THEN we can have a useful 
discussion. So far the only thing I hear is assertions offered without any 
foundation that the current format is problematic, while every personal 
computer operating system sold (or given away for free) the past decade can 
display it without the need to install additional software. That's a pretty 
good result for files which date back as long as 40 years. Good luck finding 
any other document format of the same age with that property.
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