[rfc-i] How "modern" word processors do it

[Joe Touch]

On May 26, 2012, at 9:34 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> On 2012-05-26 17:18, Joe Touch wrote:
>> 
>> Here's a good example of something that container editing won't allow:
>> 
>> ---
>> The interface between TCP and lower level protocol is essentially
>>  unspecified except that it is assumed there is a mechanism whereby the
>>  two levels can asynchronously pass information to each other.
>>  Typically, one expects the lower level protocol to specify this
>>  interface.  TCP is designed to work in a very general environment of
>>  interconnected networks.  The lower level protocol which is assumed
>>  throughout this document is the Internet Protocol [2].
>> 
>> 
>> 1.5.  Operation
>> 
>> 
>>  As noted above, the primary purpose of the TCP is to provide reliable,
>>  securable logical circuit or connection service between pairs of
>>  processes.  To provide this service on top of a less reliable internet
>>  communication system requires facilities in the following areas:
>> ---
>> 
>> I just grabbed part of two different containers. That can be useful for context. Why prevent it?
> 
> Who's preventing it? You can carve out chunks from xml2rfc source files
> in this way; I've done it often. What you have above is
> 
>  <t>.....</t>
>  </section>
>  <section title="Operation">
>  <t>.....</t>
> 
> Drop that into an ongoing section in a new document and it will work fine.

It will not necessarily compile. Here's an example that fails:

---
The TCP Authentication Option (TCP-AO) uses a TCP option Kind value of TBD-IANA-KIND. The following sections describe TCP-AO and provide a review of TCP MD5 for comparison.

4.1. Review of TCP MD5 Option

For review, the TCP MD5 option is shown in Figure 1.
---

In that case, you have:

 <p>...</p>
 <section title="Review of TCP MD5 Option">
 <p>...</p>

That results in unbalanced sections.

> It will even work fine if the section nesting level is different in the second
> document. With MS-Word, dropping a Heading1 in the middle of a set of
> Heading2s can spoil your afternoon.

Actually, that works just fine - it starts a new heading. If that's not what you want, go to outline mode and shift the text to the level you want it.

Word, BTW, never "doesn't compile" after a paste.

Joe