[rfc-i] draft-rfc-image-files-03

[Joe Touch]

On 4/9/2012 4:49 AM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
...
> 1. the source format: what the author uses to edit the text
> 2. the submission format: what the author uploads to the IETF servers
> 3. the authoritative format archived by the RFC editor
> 4. zero or more additional display formats, which may or may not be hosted by the IETF and/or RFC editor
...
> However, with an HTML-based format we could come pretty close. Unless
> I'm seriously mistaken, HTML can be made to do everything that the
> XML2RFC format can do, but unlike XML2RFC format it's also a display
> format so it can easily be displayed natively in browsers. And it's
> text based, so text-based tools can still work.

The ability to edit source representations in a text editor is 
meaningless. For any specific format there exist editors with varying 
capabilities.

Editing HTML source (or XML) is just as much fun as editing binary, IMO.

I appreciate the desire to bring the authoritative format into the 21st 
century, but let's not stay in the stone-age in terms of our 
expectations of editors in the process.

The choice of format shouldn't be determined solely by tools, but they 
ought to be a consideration. Just as we all want formats that are widely 
accepted (rather than inventing our own), we should expect to be able to 
use *modern* tools that are widely available too.

Joe