Great thoughts from many people. I just want to clarify a few things as I see that my message is slightly misunderstood. Firstly: The core of my opinion is NOT that I think people should convert to nroff encoding or XML coding or XHTML encoding or whatever encoding as editing language. I don't think that authors in the future should have to deal with any markup language at all. That is a task for the editing application, not the drafter. The only way that can happen is if we can provide the missing link between draft editing and markup. The current formats as they are specified and used today are both crippled. Nroff can capture exact formatting but can't capture more advanced content building metadata very well. I had to add a directive layer (only understood by NroffEdit) inside Nroff comments to make that happen. The output is still compatible with any nroff compiler, but such compiler will not understand how to use the NroffEdit directives to alter e.g. Table of content as the document evolves (the actual subject of this thread). XML as it is used can capture content building metadata but not format. That means that I can't build an editing tool that can capture the editing process in standardized markup. As long as this is the case, no editing tools free of markup hacking can be developed that can interoperate with other editing tools on a full scale. Secondly: The reason why I personally use Nroff as edit format is: 1) That how I started off and I have seen no compelling reason yet to switch. 2) I find it personally the least evil format for the text writing process. 3) I managed to overcome many of the backsides with nroff (Table of content building, reference generation etc) in my NroffEdit tool. 4) I like the WYSIWYG experience in my tool. To always be able to immediately see the result of my editing makes me a better writer. I have no reason to try to convince anyone to use anything but what works best for you. The most I can which for by making NroffEdit available is to put up a viable darn-easy-to-use alternative to xml editing to inspire further development of better tools. Kudos to Julian and others involved with xml2rfc for you efforts! /Stefan On 11-03-25 7:21 PM, "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > >--On Friday, March 25, 2011 13:06 -0400 "Andrew G. Malis" ><agmalis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> I know that XML is the wave of the future, but I just want to >> give Stefan a plug as a happy user that NroffEdit makes the >> mechanical and formatting part of writing drafts almost >> effortless. > >And, had it appeared a decade ago, I might be using it too. As >it is, it would require my learning something new when I have a >pair of adequate (for me) solutions... and I'm at least as >vunerable to "what I know is better" as anyone else. "Wave of >the future" doesn't interest me nearly as much as being sure >that whatever tools people find convenient and are willing to >support as needed remain usable and, in particular, that we >don't find ourselves requiring the use of one particular tool... >no matter what it is. > > john > _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf