Hi, As a MIB Doctor and chair of the Bridge WG, I have been working with the IEEE 802.1 WG, who will assume maintenance responsiblities for the Bridge WG Mib modules. IEEE 802.1 publishes their standards in PDF. We had to make a special request that they make the MIB portion of their documents available in ASCII format, partly so, as part of the transition process, IETF MIB Doctors could review their documents (e.g., running the MIB module through smilint and other compilers), but also so the MIB modules could be extracted for importing into network management applications, such as NET-SNMP and HP OvenView. A similar issue will exist for documents that contain code snippets. While I personally like PDF for many things, I find PDF to be a poor choice for IETF works-in-progress, or even for RFCs because they lack many of the characteristics that ASCII files offer. David Harrington dbharrington@xxxxxxxxxxx > -----Original Message----- > From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On > Behalf Of John C Klensin > Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 3:37 PM > To: Marshall Eubanks > Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: Alternative formats for IDs > > Marshall, > > --On Monday, 02 January, 2006 16:03 -0500 Marshall Eubanks > <tme@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > >... > > The project, currently referred to as PDF/A, will address > > the growing need to electronically > > archive documents in a way that will ensure preservation of > > their contents over an extended period of > > time, and will further ensure that those documents will be > > able to be retrieved and rendered with a > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > consistent and predictable result in the future. This need > > exists in a growing number of international > > government and industry segments, including legal systems, > > libraries, newspapers, regulated industries, and others. > > > > The work will address the use of PDF for multi-page > > documents that may contain a mixture of > > text, raster images and vector graphics. It will also address > > the features and requirements that must be > > supported by reading devices that will be used to retrieve and > > render the archived documents. > ^^^^^^ > > Emphasis added, of course. > > As I have understood it, PDF/A is intended as an archival format > for the sorts of documents that exist on paper, with a primary > goal of being able to render things that look just like the > paper looked like. It has not been a requirement that PDF/A > support extraction of text, editing, insertion of new materials, > and other forms of markup. Indeed, some of the participants in > the PDF/A effort might consider support for some of those things > to be liabilities. Your note reinforces that impression. > > As such, it is (IMO, barely) possible that PDF/A would be a > reasonable format for storing archival documents such as RFCs. > But it would be a terrible format for working documents such as > I-Ds, for the reasons discussed in my earlier note. > > john > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf