On 5 Nov 2020, at 17:08, Larry Masinter wrote:
While github isn't THE answer, the "bespoke tools" developed to support legacy workflows really DON'T matter that much.
Google Docs, Dropbox, Microsoft Office, Acrobat, git.ietf.org might all be options.
Right now, IETF is in the unenviable position of imposing a serious tax of attention for people who don't care about text formats to make a contribution.
Larry, I apologize if this sounds harsh, but text formats have almost nothing to do with the bespoke tools and I don't think you really understand how our toolchain is being used or the breadth of functions being provided. Do any of the tools on your list, without bespoke customization, support working group document management along these lines?
- a tree of state management (with different trees for WG vs AD management; if you haven't looked at the document state tree, you should before answering the question)
- balloting by IESG, which integrates heavily with state management
- integration with meeting agendas (such that documents can appear as topic items, meeting materials can be managed, calendars can show pointers to those items and online meeting calls)...
- role-based ACL (ability to change different attributes or edit the document depending on whether you're the AD, chair, doc editor, doc shepherd, participant, review team member, etc.)
- review team assignments with due-date reminders and templates / forms for reviews
And the list goes on and on. Again, the text format of the documents has little to nothing to do with these issues.
If you're simply saying we should adjust our workflow to conform to some other tool, that seems completely backwards and I think the suggestion is misguided. If you're saying that it will just take some customizations of these other tools to accomplish what we want, I think you wildly underestimate the amount of customization that will be needed.
Yes, there are loads of ways we can and probably should integrate things like git document management and other editing tools into our toolchain. And the tools team has done those sorts of integrations for many years. But the suggestion that it is so simply replaced is seriously misunderstanding the tools we have and our workflows.
pr
--
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best
