Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required

[Marshall Eubanks <tme at americafree.tv>]

On Jul 2, 2009, at 12:16 PM, Ted Hardie wrote:

> At 10:19 PM -0700 7/1/09, Douglas Otis wrote:
> > for wanting more than just plain text documents is to permit
> > inclusion of charts, graphs, and tables, for a visual society
>
>
> It seems to me that where this discussion has faltered before is
> on whether this is, in fact, a requirement.

You are exactly correct, and I can recall several interminable  
discussions of this.

To save time, I would suggest adopting the Patent Office rules on  
Perpetual Motion. People advocating for a change to facilitate figures  
(or to allow complicated math, such as tensor analysis) should have an  
existence proof, i.e., a document that requires the change to be  
published. (A document that left the IETF to be published elsewhere  
for this reason would also do.)

Regards
Marshall

> In the past, multiple
> people have argued that switching to a mode in which understanding
> the figures is necessary to understanding the protocol would
> be a step away from clarity, searchability, and inclusiveness.
> We have agreed to do it in some places in the past, but I
> believe there has been no previous rough consensus that it
> should be the default.
>
> If we are going to re-run this discussion, can we first check
> on the consensus on this requirement?  If we don't agree
> here, the chance of this run concluding seems no better than
> any of the previous runs at the problem.  The discussion
> just fragments into tool use, printer capabilities, and various
> distractions.
>
> 			regards,
> 				Ted Hardie
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Regards
Marshall Eubanks
CEO / AmericaFree.TV