[rfc-i] Does the canonical RFC format need to be "readable" by developers and others?

[John Levine]

>Rather, there should be one form that readers who are NOT active IETF 
>members, and who may not be able to read XML or SGML, can check in the 
>case of apparent inconsistencies to make sure they know what the precise 
>spec is.

I'm still having trouble imagining someone who was unable to figure
out the codes in xml2rfc but nonetheless had sufficient technical
depth to make sense of a typical RFC.  As I (and no doubt many others)
can say from experience, if a question like this arises in a court
case, the lawyers don't try to figure it out themselves.  They hire an
expert to explain it.

>If we decide that HTML is the right input form, I am probably willing to 
>let some well-defined rendition of that HTML be the canonical form for 
>resolving such inconsistencies.

Man, there's a swamp.  Do you really want to put a million lines of
browser code in the line of fire to interpret an RFC?

R's,
John