Re: Call for Community Feedback: Retiring IETF FTP Service

[tom petch <[e-mail]>]

On 28/11/2020 18:48, John C Klensin wrote:
>
>
> --On Saturday, November 28, 2020 18:00 +0000 "Salz, Rich"
> <rsalz=[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>>      > For a long time, I struggled to download copies of IETF
>> documents in the     > form that the author intended
>>
>> Why?  I have to admit that this makes me giggle, like seeing
>> the Original Words in gilt lettering.  But my question is
>> serious.
>
> Tom,
>
> While I am concerned about the rest of your comments, especially
> if the txt and PDF copies on the IETF site are not working for
> you [1], I have to share Rich's concern about "form the author
> intended".  If you are having that problem with RFCs and go far
> enough back, the only way to get the original (and presumably
> forms involve getting access to archives of paper copies that, I
> assume, are still at ISI, and getting photocopies.  Even for
> RFCs that were available in machine-readable form a few years
> later, you would have to retrieve Postscript files and render
> them.  I don't have any idea how stable Postscript rendering
> mechanisms (and their supposed clones) were over time and across
> devices or whether they were "improved" enough to make assuming
> they represented what the author intended questionable. [2]
>
> For I-Ds, my memory may be incorrect but I believe that, for
> years, the only forms that could be submitted were text (not
> even nroff - one needed to do the formatting and submit the
> text).    The rules about the text files were, again IIR, rather
> relaxed.  There were likely limitations about line widths but,
> e.g., pagination was certainly not required.  At least in my
> case, those text-file submissions (whether prepared in a text
> editor like emacs, in some runoff descendant, or in WordPerfect
> or WordStar), were often compromises between the form that I
> intended, what was feasible, and how much time I was willing to
> spend fussing.  To retrieve what I intended, you'd need to be
> able to retrieve hand-written notes (if they existed) or read my
> mind back several decades.  So, while Rich giggles and I wonder
> about media preservation, I'll assume that was not really what
> you meant ... and am now wondering what you did mean.

John

Yes, my carefully crafted e-mail was not as precise as I thought.  I 
only got involved with the IETF in 1994 and the oldest document I have 
dates from 1997 so what I was referring to was the electronic, ASCII 
format and I was assuming that what made it onto the IETF site was what 
the author intended, perhaps after some iterations and assuming, as with 
any publisher, that the author accepts the house style of the publisher 
even if as a necessry evil:-)

Tom Petch







>
>      john
>
>
>
> [1] I hope you have filed, or will immediately file, trouble
> tickets on that with enough details that the issues can be
> tracked down and repaired because, IMO at least, they represent
> serious bugs somewhere.
>
> [2] Perhaps Larry or someone else with long-term Adobe
> experience could help with that if it were actually important or
> people were interested.
> .
>