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

[Melinda Shore <melinda.shore at gmail.com>]

Tim Bray wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Melinda Shore<melinda.shore at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You're heading into new territory, here.
> No, I disagreed with an unqualified assertion you made using the
> extremely well-defined term"ASCII". 

Sure, you are.  You're implying that there are characters
we want to display that can't be done within the current
constraints.

> I don't think that the second part of your assertion is correct.  I'm
> not trying to be difficult. I introduce by example the huge number of
> mobile devices that handle HTML effortlessly and IETF legacy ASCII not
> at all.  

I've never run into a device that can't display ASCII at
all (if it can display HTML it can display plain ASCII), but
have used and owned a large number of devices that can't
display HTML.  Plus, there appears to be a certain amount
of whimsy involved with rendering HTML and displays can be
inconsistent, which 1) is one of the complaints about the
current format, and 2) is undesirable for the display of
technical specifications.

Melinda