[rfc-i] Data point [Re: Fwd:I-D ACTION:draft-hoffman-utf8-rfcs-03.txt]

[Julian Reschke]

Joe Touch wrote:
> Right - the one tool I had that understood ASCII, CRs, and FFs was
> Wordpad. It worked for reading RFCs on the screen and for printing them
> (to printers I've used, e.g., inkjets, lasers, save as PDF, PS, etc.)
> 
> That tool will display UTF-8 correctly on the screen, but will not print
> the special characters properly.
> 
> So I can have EITHER UTF-8 special characters or FFs, but not both.
> That's not a path forward, IMO.

Again; use a web browser and navigate to the HTML version on 
tools.ietf.org. It will print properly.

>> At this point I'm really not sure what your point is.
>>
>> - LF as a line separator is a problem in Windows? Agreed.
> 
> Nope - it works fine in Wordpad.
> 
>> - It's hard to enter formfeed characters in Windows editors? Agreed.
> 
> Well, a fairly definitive site on how to enter FFs in UTF-8 apparently
> gets it incorrect. I don't recall similar issues with ASCII tables being
> incorrect.

Formfeeds in UTF-8 are the same thing as in ASCII. I think I said so 
already, didn't I?

So if you use the information from that very side to get info about how 
to include a form feed into ASCII, you will face the *identical* problem.

What does that tell us? Editor support for embedding form feeds is a 
problem. That has *nothing* to do with UTF-8.

>> (These problems go away as soon as the author chooses one of the tools
>> we have for the job)
> 
> They go away only if we chose to generate RFCs using xml2rfc, for which
> I have yet to see a WYSIWYG editor.

Many generate RFCs using xml2rfc without that kind of editor and can 
live with it, or even consider it a feature (less distraction).

> For reading the docs, we can use Wordpad.
> 
> As to printing the docs, there's NO path forward yet that preserves both
> UTF-8 and FFs.

That is incorrect. Again: run the document through a filter to HTML, and 
print from a browser. That is one way that is known that it *will* work. 
There may be more.

For instance, import it into Word and print from there.

> At this point, I'm wondering why I'm involved in proving that UTF-8
> can't be done on Vista. IMO, a viable proposal needs to include a test
> coordinate by the author that involves a set of currently used common
> platforms - i.e., the onus of proof is on them.

I think it's agreed that *displaying* the RFC is simple (just use a web 
browser), but that printing isn't. That's the same for both ASCII and 
UTF-8. I personally don't care at all. I don't print things anymore.

For ASCII, you seem to have found a solution that works for you on 
Windows. It's definitely not obvious for people who don't know already. 
I have told you about another one that will work both for ASCII and 
UTF-8. How many ways do we need?

BR, Julian