--On Saturday, November 28, 2020 18:00 +0000 "Salz, Rich"
<rsalz=40akamai.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > For a long time, I struggled to download copies of IETF
> documents in the > form that the author intended
>
> Why? I have to admit that this makes me giggle, like seeing
> the Original Words in gilt lettering. But my question is
> serious.
Tom,
While I am concerned about the rest of your comments, especially
if the txt and PDF copies on the IETF site are not working for
you [1], I have to share Rich's concern about "form the author
intended". If you are having that problem with RFCs and go far
enough back, the only way to get the original (and presumably
forms involve getting access to archives of paper copies that, I
assume, are still at ISI, and getting photocopies. Even for
RFCs that were available in machine-readable form a few years
later, you would have to retrieve Postscript files and render
them. I don't have any idea how stable Postscript rendering
mechanisms (and their supposed clones) were over time and across
devices or whether they were "improved" enough to make assuming
they represented what the author intended questionable. [2]
For I-Ds, my memory may be incorrect but I believe that, for
years, the only forms that could be submitted were text (not
even nroff - one needed to do the formatting and submit the
text). The rules about the text files were, again IIR, rather
relaxed. There were likely limitations about line widths but,
e.g., pagination was certainly not required. At least in my
case, those text-file submissions (whether prepared in a text
editor like emacs, in some runoff descendant, or in WordPerfect
or WordStar), were often compromises between the form that I
intended, what was feasible, and how much time I was willing to
spend fussing. To retrieve what I intended, you'd need to be
able to retrieve hand-written notes (if they existed) or read my
mind back several decades. So, while Rich giggles and I wonder
about media preservation, I'll assume that was not really what
you meant ... and am now wondering what you did mean.
john
[1] I hope you have filed, or will immediately file, trouble
tickets on that with enough details that the issues can be
tracked down and repaired because, IMO at least, they represent
serious bugs somewhere.
[2] Perhaps Larry or someone else with long-term Adobe
experience could help with that if it were actually important or
people were interested.
