IETF 114 GitHub Workshop

Next steps

Hold an experiment similar to RFC 9245.
Hold another workshop after we've completed a couple of more experiments (with both XML and markdown sources).

They like issue tracking and find it easier to work with than email threads.
- Links in email lead to different diffs, which is frustrating.
- Ability to approve individual issues.
- Inattentive authors can follow issues better than email threads.
- Easier for the AD to know more about an issue they have to approve.
They want better change tracking than what the current AUTH48 process offers.
- What changed, when, and why.
They want copy editing separated from formatting edits, with formatting done last.
- Formatting approval should go quickly and easily.
Roundtripping between markdown and XML causes pain for both the authors and editors.
- Want markdown to match because the doc is a bis.
- markdown =/= XML and difficult/impossible to get roundtripping correct.
They thought that the RPC was doing much better with avoiding needless whitespace edits in the XML.
Other suggestions:
- RPC could work on docs before IESG approval.
- RPC shouldn't have to handle plain text format (id2xml, docs built with MS Word templates).
- Working in an author's repo would allow the RPC to use the doc's toolchain (e.g., httpbis docs had automatic ABNF checking built into the repo).
- Separating authoring vs publishing grammars.
- Tech solutions to research: the ability to show different diffs based on edit type.
See meeting notes for details.