On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 03:27:15PM +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> On 28-Oct-20 06:54, John Scudder wrote:
> > As a reminder for those who have lost track, this thread was kicked off by Toerless saying he would like to be able to render his own copies to include a useful table of contents, for his own use, at home, probably with the blinds drawn to keep the world from witnessing his shame. A little while later Henrik said in no uncertain terms that adding the capability to xml2rfc would be trivial, and that he???d be happy to do it, but that he was specifically directed not to do so.
Actually, my original question was what it would take for IETF
(tools/datatracker) to provide such renderings.
> Not speaking for anybody except myself, I'll simply observe that the tools people were asked to go and implement the RFCs that were published after a public comment period (as Robert pointed out), and one of those RFCs specified a txt format without page numbers. So that's what got done. Not everybody agreed with that choice at the time, and evidently not everyone agrees with it now, but it wasn't decided in secret.
This is probably true but does not cover what i think is the problematic
part of what seems to have happened: Not the choice of initial renderings
to be supported on IETF web pages, but a strong belief that renderings
with specific other renderings (such as page numbers) must be prohibited
because they supposedly create problems. Whereas the arguments for those
problems where seemingly debunked repeatedly. As well as "mayority should
prefer our choosen rendering (no pagination)", so why do another rendering
for a minority. Which does not seem to be very inclusive.
>
> > So far, nobody has even attempted to justify this directive, although a zoo of straw men has been paraded through the subsequent follow ups.
>
> The directive was "please implement the RFCs". If I understand correctly, that was budgetted and paid for. As far as I can see there's nothing in those RFCs that even purports to forbid other formats being generated, but there *is* a rational argument against page numbers that's been made here, and the same argument applies against line numbers. If you want something more precise than section numbers, the only portable one I can envisage is paragraph numbers. That has a good chance of working across all formats.
I agree that those RFCs would not prohibit additional renderings,
but John Levines, your and other participants reactions makes it sound
very likely that there would be resistance against any (RFC) level ask
for such additional rendering (including your prior paragraph: you don't
like it, so you will fight against it - it being page numbers). Including
the fact that any such RFC would have to be driven by IAB, and IAB might
also simply go on whatever they feel is required by the community instead
of consulting with it in this instance.
Cheers
Toerless
> Brian
>
> > ???John
> >
> >> On Oct 27, 2020, at 1:42 PM, Ted Lemon <mellon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >> ???[External Email. Be cautious of content]
> >>
> >>
> >> You???re perfectly allowed. Use enscript, or whatever pagination tool you want. The issue is not that you aren???t allowed???it???s that if the IETF provides a pagination tool, we will be perceived as having provided page numbers, and those page numbers may then be used when referencing documents. By making you take the step of paginating, we avoid that worry.
> >>
> >> Of course, if your goal is just to be annoyed at dem kids, please continue??? :)
> >>
> >>>>> On Oct 27, 2020, at 1:37 PM, Randy Bush <randy@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>> The argument that page numbers are harmful for *any* *purpose*
> >>>>> *whatever* is not reasonable. ... A table of contents, in short.
> >>> <doh> no can do. might make document more useful. </snark>
> >>> and if you drop it on the floor, you can put it in the card sorter. oh
> >>> wait. :)
> >>> what i find shocking here is the "we know best, and you will not be
> >>> allowed attitude," an authoritarianism which seems to have become
> >>> more and more popular.
> >>> randy, going back under my rock
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