Re: Last Call: 'Proposed Experiment: Normative Format in Additionto ASCII Text' to Experimental RFC (draft-ash-alt-formats)

["Stephen Sprunk" <stephen at sprunk.org>]

Thus spake "Carl Malamud" <carl at media.org>
> > As for traditional mathematical notation, I think resorting to it for
> > all but the simplest formulas, e.g. "y =(m * x) + b)", often
> > does a grave disservice to all readers who are not mathematicians.
>
> "RFC authors MUST NOT use calculus or matrix algebra.  Addition and
> subtraction MAY be expressed as formulas but authors SHOULD NOT
> use formulations sufficiently complex to make a reader's head hurt."

IMHO, this would be a very good rule; the IETF is supposedly about running 
code, and complex equations that the average programmer cannot understand 
without digging up a college math book are unimplementable in the real 
world.  Pseudocode is far, far more valuable than pretty equations.

IMHO, a direct result of the above is that any math that cannot be described 
adequately in ASCII text does not belong in an RFC.  This is similar to the 
view that diagrams that cannot be represented in ASCII art are too complex 
to be meaningful to the reader.

Every time this debate comes around, I am struck by the notion that 
normative formats other than ASCII are a solution in search of a problem. 
About the only argument I've read to date that makes sense is to allow UTF-8 
to access characters that do not exist in ASCII, such as for authors' names 
or better line-drawing characters.  Everything else seems to fall into the 
"our specs aren't as pretty as other SDOs' specs" category.

S

Stephen Sprunk        "Stupid people surround themselves with smart
CCIE #3723           people.  Smart people surround themselves with
K5SSS         smart people who disagree with them."  --Aaron Sorkin 


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