Re: Document diffs... Re: A sad farewell

[Joseph Touch <[e-mail]>]

> On Nov 6, 2020, at 9:06 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 11:42 AM Joseph Touch <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>> On Nov 6, 2020, at 8:02 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>> 
>> My tool, RFCTool can accept input in Word, or Markdown or both. It is open source and runs on OSX, Linux and Windows.
> 
> Typing XML in Word is not really Word (E.g., references, anchors, tag data, etc.). 
> 
> Why on earth did you assume that was what I was doing?

From the instructions on inserting anchors and references. 

> IMO, the point of a Word template is to have it be able to edit and print drafts as they would be seen by users AND to allow use of Word’s internal cross-reference capability. 
> 
> Of course. I use an open source library that parses the Word document for me and returns a parse tree containing all the paragraph and line markup, cross references, etc. etc.
> 
> I do use a very small amount of pseudo-XML at the very start of a document because this is a more convenient means of expressing the IETF specific markup than breaking that all out into Word tags. I am also using xml tags for citations because we need those broken out into normative and informative and the Word citation manager isn't really fit for purpose.

And for cross-references, e.g., “See Section 12” or “See Figure 22”.

By the time you add it up, you’re taking a good chunk of why Word is useful and pushing it off to explicitly entered XML.

> I can easily extend the converter so that instead of typing <norm="draft-hallambaker-mesh-architecture"/> for a normative citation of that draft you would use a Word line style so that all you see is draft-hallambaker-mesh-architecture, preferably in a different color.

That’s not a Word cross-reference. That’s a line style. 

Joe