On 2/25/21 12:39 PM, Andrew Campling wrote:
This made me smile as GitHub is itself an excellent example of a tool being a barrier to entry for new participants.
+1.
I've been using word processors since the early '80s (WordStar back in the day), don't understand why anyone would opt to use a different tool to write a document.
I would like to make it be the case that anyone could submit a document written with their favorite word processor, and for that document to be converted to whatever format we want to use. I actually think this is feasible for document submission. If nothing else, most word processors can generate some flavor of HTML, and that HTML could be stripped down to its bare essence and converted to rfc2xml. It's entirely doable, probably with a relatively small amount of python code. (You do need some conventions for representing metadata in HTML that can be input with a word processor, but I think I see how to do that too.)
But if we insist on one particular word processor, that will create a huge mess. Having multiple parties edit the same document in succession with different tools (even if they're supposedly all compatible with the same format) results in a document that some people won't be able to read or edit, won't display or print consistently, etc., and may not be repairable. And all of those document formats are moving targets.
I know that this point of view will not be accepted by many current IETF participants but it seems particularly perverse to use a software development tool to write documents when there are many widely available options that are far better suited to the task (many of which support collaborative writing).
Actually, I doubt there is a single option that is better and which supports collaborative writing. Because forcing thousands of volunteers to use a common set of proprietary tools (many of which are unreliable, profoundly dysfunctional, expensive, and have abysmal user interfaces) is absolutely unacceptable.
Keith
