Re: [Gendispatch] Updating the IETF Discussion List Charter (was: Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-eggert-bcp45bis-02.txt)

[Joel Halpern <[e-mail]>]

While in theory you can submit an I-D without the XML, there are at 
least three issues as I understand it:

1) We no longer have tooling support for generating I-Ds in that form.  
So you are on your own for getting the boiler plate right, etc.

2) The better HTML generation in the datatracker relies on the XML, 
because that gives a lot more hints than the plina text.  the tools will 
do what they can with no XML, but depending upon how other people read, 
you can make it harder on them by accident.

3) If the draft gets adopted by a working group, and if for any reason 
there is a need to change authors, having the XML gives the new authors 
help in getting things right.  No, from an individual perspective that 
may not matter.  But from the community perspective it does.


As I understand it, if you use the markdown approach you only very 
rarely have to worry about the xml.  So it gets you close to not having 
the xml from your perspective as an author, while dealing with the 
issues above.

Yours,

Joel

On 6/26/2022 5:18 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
>
> On 6/26/22 17:12, Eric Rescorla wrote:
>
>>     I would phrase it  a little differently.   If you use a working
>>     template using a preparation form you are comfortable with, it
>>     works pretty well.  Yes, there are some hoops to jump through. 
>>     For example, we need the copyright grant.
>>
>> I think this is generally accurate.
>>
>> Having written a number of drafts with xml2rfc and with 
>> kramdown->xml2rfc my experience is that xml2rfc has a number of 
>> mystery failure modes which are hard to diagnose. It's a lot easier 
>> to get into those states editing the xml directly because kramdown 
>> generally generates correct XML. However, if you do manage to get 
>> into such a state with kramdown it can be very hard to figure out 
>> what's going on!
>
> Is there a way to skip xml2rfc entirely?  IMO that's the biggest part 
> of the problem.   I can accept the utility of XML for an RFC that 
> needs to be maintained for a long time, but I'm not at all sure it's 
> worth the trouble for a -00 Internet-Draft.   Maybe the right time to 
> move to XML is when an author or WG is ready to submit to IESG.
>
> Keith
>
>