Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting

["Scott O. Bradner" <[e-mail]>]

the usefulness of a link depends on where the reference is used - I, for example, reference RFCs very
frequently in expert reports in patent cases where everything is still paper-based so the references
need to work when printed on paper

Scott


> On Dec 1, 2019, at 3:45 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Scott,
> 
> On 02-Dec-19 09:36, Scott O. Bradner wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Dec 1, 2019, at 3:33 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 02-Dec-19 08:09, John Levine wrote:
>>>> In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>>>>> I thought the format was a compromise between US Letter format, A4 
>>>>> format, and printers.
>>>> 
>>>> I thought it was 72 characters because that's how many you got on a
>>>> punch card, leaving 8 for the sequence number.
>>> 
>>> Keith is right and it was one of Postel+Reynolds's wiser decisions. The only case where it goes wrong is with software or printers that fail to recognise the FF (form feed) character correctly.
>>> 
>>> Phill is correct that it wastes some white space; that's the price of fitting into both paper sizes. When I print drafts, which is rarely, I do it "booklet" style which limits waste paper considerably.
>>> 
>>> As we discussed 3 years ago, numbered pagination is useful in a printable format but irrelevant in a screen-only format.
>> 
>> except for references - section numbers are frequently far too far apart when you want to point someone to a particular
>> chunk of text
> 
> Yes. I sometimes use page numbers for that reason, like https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3056#page-15 (random example with no significance). For new-format HTML, any internal <xref/> should generate a link.
> 
>    Brian
> 
>> 
>> Scott
>> 
>>> 
>>> Can we stop now?
>>> 
>>>    Brian
>>>> 
>>>>> What would be parochial would be to assume that nobody in the world 
>>>>> needs to print RFCs using mechanical printers any more - that everyone 
>>>>> in the world should have laser printers, ample power for their fusers, 
>>>>> and a generous supply of suitable paper and toner -
>>>> 
>>>> I think that if you price all the printers made in the past decade or
>>>> two, you'll find that there are a lot of laser and inkjet printers and
>>>> close to nothing else, certainly nothing restricted to fixed pitch
>>>> text.  The only mechanical printers I recall seeing in recent years
>>>> are antique Okidata dot matrix units printing whatever it is they
>>>> print at airport gates.
>>>> 
>>>> R's,
>>>> John
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>>