Re: Henning's proposal (Re: ASCII art)

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has anyone proved by demonstration that this is possible?
It doesn't have to be part of the rules...

I don't think translating any Word style that kind of looks like an I-D is likely to be feasible.

A slightly different question is whether we can come up with a Word template that makes this feasible or at least minimizes the manual conversion labor at the end. I don't see why asking authors for another 30 minute of XML tweaking after 3 years of document editing is excessive. The IETF is not a vanity press, and the authors serve the community, not the other way around.



- The XML version is made available to the public and is the
authoritative version, in addition to the traditional ASCII version. The
XML version can then be used to generate more readable and printable
versions using XSLT or other tools. I suspect generating a PDF version
wouldn't be hard, either. These presentation formats can then evolve as
people care to write tools.


You can't have two authoritative versions..........

As long as the text has been known to have been generated from the XML, this is not fundamentally different from the PDF versions of ASCII that have been mentioned on this list. Nominally, the XML would be authoritative if available, but for all practical purposes, the ASCII would be sufficient as a working document. I don't see that this is a real, practical problem.




- The XML format also allows the use of UTF-8, for use in examples, not
as normative text. The translation to ASCII can automatically insert U+
or other appropriate elements.


How would the translation know when U+ is appropriate...?

This is probably a side issue, but the assumption would be that you'd only be allowed to put in UTF-8 if indeed the U+ notation can be substituted there.




- SVG or a subset thereof is authorized for illustrative (non-normative)
diagrams. The XML schema already supports the ability to link alternative
renditions of graphics, so this requires minimal effort.


I suspect that there are dragons here too.... but I've never tried to do anything with SVG, so I don't know the tools for it....

I'm sure we can find reasons not to try anything new. We could take an attitude that experiments might help us decide whether these are real problems. I'm not very good at anticipating all the problems - and comparing any problems to the positive effects that change might bring.


Just nibbling at the details.... the big question is whether this will be felt as help or hindrance to the people who do the real work...

One example of the cost of doing business in the old way: I know that the current system of only having ASCII available is a pain in the neck when you try to write the "bis" version, requiring manual conversion and hoping that nothing got lost in the manual translation. Often, we have to back-port AUTHOR48 changes into the author-available XML-RFC (if that can be located after a few years) when it's time to work on the "bis" version. This is tedious and error-prone.

Henning


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