[rfc-i] Pagination requirements

[Joe Hildebrand]

On 5/22/12 5:59 PM, "Martin Rex" <mrex at sap.com> wrote:

> I do _not_ have a problem with others creating special printouts that
> fit their needs.  But it would be stupid to create a brittle format
> of a standard for which no two persons can create 100% matching
> printouts _by_default_.

Nobody created a 100% matching printout with the line-printer format.  If I
had a different daisy wheel loaded, it would look different.  I still
disagree that this has ever been a requirement.

>> No it doesn't.  Printing the current format is an absolute mess, unless you
>> have a vintage line printer.
> 
> Proably untrue. There is a PDF version for existing RFCs available at
> 
>   http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfcXXXX

Those aren't canonical, and may not even match the canonical version in
text, since nobody checks for that.

> for those impaired environments that can not produce reasonable printouts
> from ASCII text. 

Such as... Every modern OS?  ^L just isn't semantic anymore.

> So if your work environment can not cope with the fairly trivial task of
> printing vintage LP, and you NEITHER can print the PDF version of it from
> tools.ietf.org, then you should REALLY replace your work enviornment,
> because it is broken beyond fixing.

Walk me through what you'd do on Windows7, for example, to print the
canonical version.  Places where I don't have easy access to "lpr" on the
command line.

>>> And btw. I'm perfectly fine with the
>>> nostalgic 80-columns fixed pitch format.
>> 
>> That's clear from your vociferous defense of the status quo.  Nostalgia has
>> a place and a time, but standards bodies aren't always that place.
> 
> Most of the standards that are truely relevant today are 10+ years old.

Let's stop, then.  Declare "victory" for the IETF, and shut it down.

> I have a printed copy of ISO/IEC 9899:1990, and use it regularly.
> 
> The drawback with ISO standards is, that few of them are freely available
> online and with even fewer of them its possible to provide an URL to
> specific sections or pages that others can use.

So let's not move the ongoing work to the ISO.

-- 
Joe Hildebrand