Parent issue: RFC Format Specific issue: images, character encoding, archival format

Size (time): 18+ months

Importance/Urgency: High/High

Problem Statement: There is significant community feedback that the limitations of plain ASCII impact the quality and reputation of the RFC series. The inability to include images, complex equations, international characters, and support for small screens are just some of the areas of concern and debate among the community.

The goals of this project are

• to document the requirements for RFC from the RFC Editor, author, and reader perspective,
• to make a decision on the appropriate format
• to define appropriate sub-projects for tools changes

RSE Actions:

• establish requirements
  • Note: issues and concerns summary garnered (primarily) from the rfc-interest discussions, March - July 2012
  • See also: RFC Format Design Team page
  • See also: RFC Format FAQ

RSOC Actions:

• review process by which decision will be reached
• provide input on specific requirements, format decisions
• provide input on any funding requests that come out of a format change

RFC Production Center & Publisher Actions:

• Provide input on editor requirements
• Participate in the RFC Format Design Team

Testing

• SVG files

Costs/Benefits

Financial:

• TBD; most visible impact on cost will be for programming time for the necessary tools, as defined by the Design Team and the Tools Team

Final project milestones:

• RPC - finish updates to database and various scripts (info pages, search pages, indexes, publication announcements
• RPC - implement JavaScript for metadata headers (based on prototype from Adam Roach)
• RPC/RSE - update FAQs
• Developer - close all major xml2rfc tickets related to the v3 format
• Stream Managers - final sign off on cutover process
• RPC/RSE - schedule hold on all AUTH48 items

Reputation: Not doing anything would result in a very high reputational cost

Estimated completion date: TBD