David MacQuigg wrote:
Your HTML version below is much more readable than even the
best formatted TXT.
The HTML produced by xml2rfc (without any XSLT tricks) is not
very pretty. The faqs.org HTML based on the TXT version is
better readable, it preserves the look and feel of real RfCs.
I assume you can output it also in PDF.
Or TIFF, or PNG. Or spell it as WAV. The one and only time
I've seen a readable PDF in the last three years was Koen's
open office slide show about SPF. Even PS is better portable
than PDF "Proprietary Dead Format" today.
If the ASCII version can be missing figures, they must be
assuming people will actually read the PDF version.
In a CD ROM collection of RfCs up to 3195 I find 2534 TXT,
42 PS, and 3 PDF. This PDF experiment is dead for a reason,
constantly updating a format in incompatible ways kills it.
they won't demand perfect formatting in the TXT version.
The TXT version is the real version, anything else is a nice
to have but not not essential add on.
I'm surprised they don't accept HTML also. Is there anyone
in the world that can't read at least the W3C subset of HTML?
Not one browser (excl. W3C Amaya) interprets HTML 4 correctly
with all its fascinating SGML features. Dito all other HTML
versions identified by the W3C (3.2 Wilbur, and older).
This situation is in theory better for XHTML, but OTOH legacy
browsers can't handle some "strict" restrictions. But they
all survive attempts to display plain text US ASCII, and the
results are predictable with a monospaced font like Courier.
I would make the HTML and PDF versions nice, do the minimum
necessary on the TXT version
Then you got it backwards, all efforts should go into the real
version, plain text US ASCII. Somebody like faqs.org knows
how to create nice HTML based on this TXT. xml2rfc just isn't
the best tool for this task.
The alternative is to sacrifice the nice formatting and just
write the document in TXT from day 1.
You need a tool for the pagination and other nits, and XML is
the most portable input format for such tools today. Purists
like Bruce still use nroff.
[waye said]
Since the RFC-editor will want the nroff file
AFAIK they are happy with the XML format. The nroff stuff is
only for the high priests of the whiter than white IETF sect
like Bruce, not for mere mortals like you or the RfC editor.
Bye, Frank