On Sat, Jul 27, 2013 at 6:22 PM, Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-- On 7/27/13 1:38 PM, Moriarty, Kathleen wrote:
> I think it would be really helpful/useful if working groups could
> provide short video overviews to help people understand the work.
> This includes newcomers and also interested observers, who may
> include implementers. Can that be accommodated, maybe at a future
> meeting? I am happy to help if I can.
I'm sorry, but no, I am not comfortable with this. If someone
wants to go off on their own and do something along these lines,
more power to them, but we have working group charters, we've
got framework documents, and presumably people can read.
I would be very sorry to see IETF *working* meetings turned into
something closer to conferences, or to dumbing things down to
accommodate newcomers who I gather from discussion so far don't have
anything particular in mind.
IETF meetings are trying to do two different things
1) Do work on working group documents and specifications
2) Foster understanding of work in other parts of the IETF and encourage cross-working group interactions.
These are different objectives that require totally different approaches. The first is best met by small one or two day meetings of people who are concentrating on just that one spec. The second is best met by plenaries and session talks designed to explain work to people outside the group.
As for tutorial sessions on tools for writing IDs... Isn't the need for such a session proof that the tools and/or the formats are broken?
I got fed up with the hosted version of XML2RFC and found it impossible to get the code running on my machine (it requires very specific python package versions that would require me to down-version). Plus I find the XML2RFC format obnoxious. The original expectation in 1999 was that XML editors would soon be ubiquitous and good. Instead there are rather and they all suck.
So I wrote my own. You can now write your RFC in HTML and the tool will convert it into IETF caveman format, formatted HTML and/or XML2RFC. I will be adding XML2RFC format sometime next week.
The code has only been tested on Windows so far but it is in CLI and so the executable can run on any platform with a runtime (all of them). I want to test on other platforms and test submitting drafts before making a release.
The reason for adding xml2rfc format is that some folk may want to use it just for the ability to manage references. Instead of having to mess about with sticking entities in the front and citations in the middle and references in the running text, just add a reference in the text, [~RFC822] for informative, [!RFC822] for normative and the tool will work it all out.
Website: http://hallambaker.com/