[rfc-i] Graceful degradation is key, was: Re: draft-hildebrand-html-rfc

[Julian Reschke]

On 2012-07-16 22:42, Martin Rex wrote:
> I'm not aware of any existing solution to print HTML in any useful way.

Open in Firefox. Press Ctrl-P.

> I can print the existing ascii TXT rfcs in 2-up fashion easily, and
> the page numbering still works and is in perfect sync with the
> TXT documents I look at on-screen and in perfect sync with the rfcmarkup
> available at http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfcXXXX
>
> If page numbering didn't work 1:1 between printouts and on-screen,
> then it would be pretty useless (as substitute).

Why?

>> I also don't understand your point here.  We're not going to be injecting
>> ads into RFCs.  You can run a browser in your xterm window, or externally.
>>   If you run a dedicated graphical browser, you can turn off as much of the
>> chrome as you like.  We need to ensure that we're using screen real-estate
>> as best we can in the pages we generate, but that's more of a design issue
>> than a format issue.
>
> Browser windows have much larger decorations than an "xterm", the tiny

Larger maybe. Much larger, no.

> number of font( size)s accessible through "zoom--" are not really useful
> if your objective is to fit a number of windows on one screen,
> and creating small browser windows often interferes with regular browsing
> because of the window size stickyness of browser windows.

I'm pretty sure this can be solved with the right command line 
parameters, or a different browser instance, or a different browser. Of 
course that requires that you *want* to make it happen, which doesn't 
seem to be the case.

> No really, Browsers are made for serialized consumption of content in
> a single window.  Many system start browser in full-screen-mode by default,
> may users use browsers in full-screen mode by default, and many web pages
> don't fit all important information on 1024x768 displays even when using
> a full-screen browser window.

We're not discussing those web pages. We're discussing RFCs that happen 
to use HTML as format. They will format nicely in windows on almost any 
width; contrary to plain text.

> I use my web browser primarily for displaying the stuff that can not
> reasonably be rendered without a browser, and I don't want to constantly
> run around chasing down tools that can convert HTML gimmickry into
> readable text.

OK, I get it; you don't like browsers. Case closed. Observation: you are 
part of a very very very small minority.

> ...

Best regards, Julian