[rfc-i] illustrations & equations rare: extra overhead for creating them acceptable

[Larry Masinter]

Opinion: Illustrations and equations should continue to be very rare:
 Because:   Reviewers must review the legibility of the document without the illustration, and the equivalence of the illustration to the non-illustration text.
   
Opinion: extra overhead for creators of illustrations and equations is OK
   Because: they are (and should remain) rare.  
                       No matter what technology is used to display, they're not usually edited "by hand" anyway.
                     There are numerous tools for creating and converting to (perhaps not for editing of) mathml / svg
            
   Opinion: equations and diagrams should have accessible alt-text / longdescs 
      Because: needed for accessibility,  for creating text-only renditions.

Observation:     diagrams and equations don't work well on small-screen devices, no matter what file format
       (ASCII art, PDF, jpeg, SVG, whatever), unless the diagrams and equations are really small.