What concerns me rather more is the observed fact that rather a lot of implementations appear to be built on the basis of the text in the O'Reilly Nutshell guides than the RFCs which we hope to be regarded as canonical. I certainly don't read ASCII RFCs or IDs as source material if I can help it. Modern typography is designed to make the process of reading printed material easier and less error prone. As a case in point I have on many occasions noted that people have failed to notice text in RFCs because they mistook it for boilerplate that could be elided. The idea that there is any lack of tools for processing HTML or XML is just plain silly. Producing RFC ASCII on the other hand is something that can only be done using an obsolete piece of software written for on obsolete printer. I never read the ASCII version of an ID if I can find an HTML version. As a pragmatic fact, XML2RFC has practically replaced the ASCII format RFC as the canonical form already. The only obstacles are the IETF tools that deliberately and insultingly make it difficult to access the HTML version. We could easily move to a world where all that was required to produce an RFC was an XML version and that the RFC editor made all chances to the XML version as canonical. Instead we have this weird little game where the XML is converted into nroff, edits are made there and the result becomes the canonical. Document format matters because first impressions matter. The ASCII format RFC tells the reader that the document was produced in the 1960s and is not to be taken seriously. The only way to make a worse impression would be to cut letters out of a newspaper headline and stick them onto card board in irregular patterns, ransom note style. If we are going to get anywhere with Internet security we are going to need to address usability. It is pretty hard to do that when you are drawing diagrams in ASCII art. HTML documents with PNG or SVG figures will be decipherable for at least as long as mankind has the ability to make electricity. Currently roughly 50% of the total global information corpus is in that format. Even if production of HTML documents stopped tomorrow we can be absolutely certain that there will be courses taught in interpreting HTML documents in 100 and 1000 years time (unless we melt the planet first). People bothered to decipher the hieroglyphics, someone will bother to decode HTML even if the knowledge is ever lost. On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Jorge Amodio <jmamodio@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Besides your eyes, (only one in some cases), you don't need any extra > junkware to be able to read the RFCs, even better, without eyes you > still can do it since text to speech works very nicely with ASCII. > > There could be some compatibility problems with some ancient blueware > still using EBCDIC. > > Keep the ASCII > > Cheers > Jorge > > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Donald Eastlake <d3e3e3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Periodically, there are flame wars on the IETF mailing list that the >> IETF should / shouldn't adopt the latest fad is document formats, >> postscript, PDF, whatever, since, after all, "everyone" uses them, >> claims they are too complicated and keep changing resulting in >> version/font/... problems are overblow, etc. As a data point, I would >> refer people to >> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/031010-hackers-love-to-exploit-pdf.html >> >> Thanks, >> Donald >> ============================= >> Donald E. Eastlake 3rd >> 155 Beaver Street >> Milford, MA 01757 USA >> _______________________________________________ >> Ietf mailing list >> Ietf@xxxxxxxx >> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf >> > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > -- -- New Website: http://hallambaker.com/ View Quantum of Stupid podcasts, Tuesday and Thursday each week, http://quantumofstupid.com/ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf