Re: document writing/editing tools used by IETF

[Julian Reschke <[e-mail]>]

Am 26.02.2021 um 04:18 schrieb Phillip Hallam-Baker:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 9:08 PM Larry Masinter <[e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     Keith is talking about formats for submission. For collaboration,
>     there's a generation of collaborative tools from Google Docs to
>     Dropbox and Microsoft tools that are a lot better than GitHub for
>     collaboration.
>
>
> There only needs to be a single interface to the ID/RFC system.
>
> My model is to allow the authors to edit the drafts in Word/Markdown and
> create HTML output close to what the ID/RFC system produces. When they
> have agreed on an update, they send the .xml file to the submission system.
> ...

I'll +1 Carsten's "specs are code".

The huge benefit of a text-based, easily-diffable format is that you can
put it under source control, and then have tools that show who changed
what and when (and optimally why). For every single change, not just
between submitted IDs. For instance, for the HTTP core documents, that
history goes back to December 2007 (and it has survived conversion from
Subversion to Git).

If you can do that with Word, I'd definitively like to see that.

Best regards, Julian