Re: More liberal draft formatting standards required

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Theodore Tso wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 09:00:48AM +0300, Yaakov Stein wrote:
> > I would not be surprised if with my next machine I would find it impossible
> > to print correctly using any of the standard utilities provided,
> > and that I would be forced to write a program to do so.
> > 
> > The machine after that will probably not have any languages I know,
> > and I hope that the IETF will be able to provide (free of charge)
> > a viewer with printing option.
> 
> There may be specific deficiencies with specific operating systems
> that no longer no how to print ASCII documents, in which case IETF
> might need to provide (or at least point to) a viewer/editor with a
> printing option.  As it stands today there are plenty of simple text
> editors that are available for Windows; they aren't provided by the OS
> provider, so they're not installed by default, but they certainly
> exist --- and, due to the simplicity of the RFC series' archival
> format, they certainly would not be hard to provide.


While I participated IETF Meetings in 1995-98, I often used "pstools" to
create printed copies (2-up) of RFCs and Internet Drafts for reading
while travelling and during meetings (didn't have a laptop).

I used a wrapping perl-script because it was a little difficult
to cope with some documents (varying page lengths and no page feed
control character, plus occasionally Word-corrupted quote characters).


Maybe the IETF could provide a conversion page on their Web-Server
that can convert RFCs and Internet Drafts on the fly from their
original ASCII-form into page-formatted PDF files, something like
you post an URL in a Form, it gives you back a PDF.


On my office PC, I use the same simple text-editor for reading
RFCs and I-Ds that I use for EMail/C/Perl/shell/config, and I
do appreciate the original ASCII format of IETF documents.

The ASCII format significantly facilitates quoting paragraphs
from the document in Email discussion, and that is particularly
helpful during development/discussion of I-Ds.


-Martin

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