[rfc-i] Internet Draft Format

[Dave Crocker]

On 3/25/2012 3:08 AM, John Levine wrote:
>> And I'm taking the trouble to walk through this to make the point that
>> agreeing on "IETF canonical HTML" is going to be a big long subtle
>> argument, and I�m not sure it�s worth having.
>
> I don't see the advantage of IETF canonical HTML over xml2rfc.  Any
> modern browser can render xml2rfc directly so long as it points to a
> suitable stylesheet.

That minor "so long as" is a non-trivial requirement.

In general, I'm finding the discussion confusing at least in terms of the 
distinction between revisable form versus presentation form.  I'm pretty sure 
each speaker knows the difference and is speaking carefully.  The problem is 
different folk have different underlying assumptions and different terms.  (Just 
to pick one example, one message referred to "upstream" and I have no idea what 
that means.

I think the model we currently work within and that we want continue to work 
within is:


   +->  Revisable  -+--+-->  Display --+
   |                |  |               |
   +----------------+  +---------------+-->  Archive


That is, we archive both the revisable form and the display form, though 
possibly not all of the variations.

The other bits to determine in some consistent fashion:

    1.  How many Revisable forms do/should we support and which are they?

    2.  How many Display forms do/should we support and which are they?


I believe the current answers are:

    1.  Revisable:  Text (Ascii);  xml2rfc

    2.  Display:    Text (Ascii);  ???

The question on Display is because I'm not remembering what the RFC Editor is 
doing versus what the IETF tools do as "unofficial" enhancements.  I think the 
current hmtl that is provided is one of the unofficial enhancements.  I also 
think it is /not/ generated from the xml2rfc but is a post-processing hack on 
the ascii text.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net