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Current proposals:
This is a summation of the more polarizing issues related to RFC format. Many participants in the discussion have dropped off in reaction to the sheer quantity of discussion around these and the other topics. To bring everyone back up to speed, this list the more contentious topics.
Pagination
Character encoding - ASCII
Yes to
ASCII: Most easily searched and displayed across a variety of platforms
No to
ASCII: In extreme cases of having to retype/scan hard copies of documents (it has been required in the past)
ASCII is significantly easier to work with
Character encoding - UTF-8
Move to UTF-8: Allows authors to spell their names correctly; certain special characters in equations or quoted from other texts allowed; citations of web pages using more international characters possible
Don't move to UTF-8: Exactly what characters are allowed and where the line should be drawn remains unclear (why some characters commonly used in European languages and not other, non-Latin characters? This is just pushing the problem around.)
For further consideration: just moving from
ASCII to UTF-8 (as opposed to UTF-8 and
HTML or XML) leaves us with dependencies on the local file systems and processors to be configured properly and do the right thing with the document, where as browsers will recognize UTF-8 and can declare the encoding definitively
Mobile Devices
Yes to Mobile Devices: We should take their needs for format flexibility (reflow) in to account
No to Mobile Devices: Not enough people use mobile devices, and those that can can generally scroll, so this should be treated as an edge case
ASCII art
No to
ASCII: It does not allow for reflow
Yes to
ASCII: Dependence on advanced diagrams (or any diagrams) causes accessibility issues
Further thoughts: If we go beyond
ASCII art, need to pick just one format: GIF? PNG? SVG?
Production and publication issues
Use of RFC-specific tools
Against: We can't be that unique in our needs that we can't use commercial tools
For: We have more control over the tools we write, and the audience that reads RFCs will always be capable of coding up something new if needed; we have xml2rfc to work from as a base
ASCII art
For: It forces people to rely more on words and clear written descriptions than the diagrams; each diagram is relatively simple and discrete
Against: The often poor, limited diagrams are a hindrance to visual thinkers
Further thoughts: If we go beyond
ASCII art and have the normative diagrams be entirely separate documents, we do not need to limit ourselves to one graphic format
Equations
For: Some authors have chosen not to publish
RFC due to difficulty in displaying proper mathematical equations
Against: So few
RFC include mathematical equations that this should not be given any priority in the discussion of format
Metadata and tagging
For: Ability to semantically tag some document info, at least authors' names and references is useful
Against: Metadata is unnecessary overhead
Further information: there is no list of tags that will be required for XML or
HTML that would build-in required simplification and support for the archival nature of the series (that people can work longer with a simplified set of tags), and until we have that, we cannot talk about tags
Containment
For: Lack of containment for sections means that processing software cannot be fully aware of the document structure, and that is serious restriction
Against: Containment is unnecessary and not compatible (or perhaps just not required?) with traditional
HTML and word processor document
Against: Requiring containment may limit the number of editors authors can use to create documents
Against: Requiring containment would require every authoring format to be translatable to the submission format
Against: Containment should be optional
Source Code format