Re: RFC archival format, was: Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required

[Pete Resnick <presnick at qualcomm.com>]

On 7/2/09 at 4:05 PM +0100, Stewart Bryant wrote:

> Tim Bray wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Iljitsch van 
> > Beijnum<iljitsch at muada.com> wrote:
> >
> > > A much better solution would be HTML, if it's sufficiently constrained.

Or, gee, we could generalize to a very constrained XML 
format.....oh....wait....

I certainly agree that some text-based markup with reasonable tools 
for folks like Dave Mills (and others) to easily convert to a 
readable (or listenable) format is absolutely essential. As Dave put 
it, the current RFC format is "unfriendly, unnecessary, possibly 
unethical and just plain wrong." I'd remove the "possibly."

> The showstopper has always been with figures which need to do in 
> separate  files. How do you  manipulate the collection of files as a 
> single object?
>
> At least with pdf you know you have the whole thing.

We've actually got a standard for that: RFC 2387 and its brethren.

pr
--
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102