Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 11/29/19 12:01 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:

> When we had these discussions many years ago, the assumption was that
> tools that operate on plain text RFCs would strip pagination first (or
> ignore it altogether) before doing what they need to do next. I would
> like to understand whether this assumption was wrong, and how *exactly*
> tools now break. 

Yes, the assumption was wrong.

And it's not possible to enumerate exactly how all of the tools everyone 
is using now break.   But more importantly, that's the wrong question to 
ask.

Many of us realize that when we revise deployed protocols, it's better 
to NOT to make assumptions about which obscure features of deployed 
protocols people depend on.   Instead we try to maintain strict 
compatibility when possible, because we realize that we can't reliably 
know about all of the assumptions that are embedded in existing 
implementations.    Sometimes it's necessary to break strict 
compatibility, but arguments of the form "nobody depends on feature X" 
are always dubious and should be interpreted as red flags.

For better or worse, the legacy text RFC format is a widely deployed 
protocol.   And while most people these days are probably not using this 
feature, there are actually quite a few modern printers out there that 
understand plain text, including form feeds, and also several software 
programs that paginate text files based on form feeds.

(Expecting everyone out there to use Windows is not only incorrect, it's 
also insulting.)

Keith