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formatsummary

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Current proposals:

This is a summation of the more polarizing issues related to RFC format. Many participants in the discussion have dropped off in reaction to the sheer quantity of discussion around these and the other topics. To bring everyone back up to speed, this list the more contentious topics.

Physical format

Pagination

  • No pagination: Want a smooth reading experience regardless of page or screen size
  • Yes pagination: Ease of reference and clear printing
  • Further information: the RFC Editor does not recommend using page numbers as points of reference

Character encoding - ASCII

  • Yes to ASCII: Most easily searched and displayed across a variety of platforms
  • No to ASCII: In extreme cases of having to retype/scan hard copies of documents (it has been required in the past) ASCII is significantly easier to work with

Character encoding - UTF-8

  • Move to UTF-8: Allows authors to spell their names correctly; certain special characters in equations or quoted from other texts allowed; citations of web pages using more international characters possible
  • Don't move to UTF-8: Exactly what characters are allowed and where the line should be drawn remains unclear (why some characters commonly used in European languages and not other, non-Latin characters? This is just pushing the problem around.)

Mobile Devices

  • Yes to Mobile Devices: We should take their needs for format flexibility (reflow) in to account
  • No to Mobile Devices: Not enough people use mobile devices, and those that can can generally scroll, so this should be treated as an edge case

ASCII art

  • No to ASCII: It does not allow for reflow
  • Yes to ASCII: Dependence on advanced diagrams (or any diagrams) causes accessibility issues
  • Further thoughts: If we go beyond ASCII art, need to pick just one format: GIF? PNG? SVG?

Production and publication issues

Use of RFC-specific tools

  • Against: We can't be that unique in our needs that we can't use commercial tools
  • For: We have more control over the tools we write, and the audience that reads RFCs will always be capable of coding up something new if needed; we have xml2rfc to work from as a base

ASCII art

  • For: It forces people to rely more on words and clear written descriptions than the diagrams; each diagram is relatively simple and discrete
  • Against: The often poor, limited diagrams are a hindrance to visual thinkers
  • Further thoughts: If we go beyond ASCII art and have the normative diagrams be entirely separate documents, we do not need to limit ourselves to one graphic format

Equations

  • For: Some authors have chosen not to publish RFC due to difficulty in displaying proper mathematical equations
  • Against: So few RFC include mathematical equations that this should not be given any priority in the discussion of format

Metadata and tagging

  • For: Ability to semantically tag some document info, at least authors' names and references is useful
  • Against: Metadata is unnecessary overhead
  • Further information: there is no list of tags that will be required for XML or HTML that would build-in required simplification and support for the archival nature of the series (that people can work longer with a simplified set of tags), and until we have that, we cannot talk about tags

Containment

  • For: Lack of containment for sections means that processing software cannot be fully aware of the document structure, and that is serious restriction
  • Against: Containment is unnecessary and not compatible (or perhaps just not required?) with traditional HTML and word processor document
  • Against: Requiring containment may limit the number of editors authors can use to create documents
  • Against: Requiring containment would require every authoring format to be translatable to the submission format
  • Against: Containment should be optional

Source Code format

  • For: having a source code format such as XML or HTML allows for greater flexibility in creating a variety of display formats, with a greater likelihood of similarity between them
  • Against: having the canonical format be in code ties us in to specific tools and/or tool support going forward

HTML

XML

ASCII

formatsummary.1342560043.txt.gz · Last modified: 2012/07/17 14:20 by rsewikiadmin