Re: document writing/editing tools used by IETF

Michael Richardson <mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca> Sun, 28 February 2021 23:20 UTC

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From: Michael Richardson <mcr+ietf@sandelman.ca>
To: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: document writing/editing tools used by IETF
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John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
    > Indeed, but that was many decades ago. There are some ways in which the
    > IETF is cutting edge, some in which we are amusingly backward. Most of
    > the people I deal with can send an e-mail that says "I highlighted the
    > changes in yellow" and all of their correspondents see the yellow
    > text. Try that here. Remember that MIME was invented in the IETF and
    > HTML down the virtual hall from here, both about 30 years ago.

Yup, and those same people also click on the links that install malware on
their computer, and require billions of dollars/year of protection against
trojans.

This is partially our fault, because we let text/html be a thing rather than
the much safer text/rich.  And we continue to allow text/html on our lists
for reasons I don't understand.

(I'm among those who don't render text/html by default, even though I could)

[Besides, highlighting changes in *yellow* is stupid, and it represents a
failure of our protocols.  You should highlight changes as mark-up, or as a
delta against a webdav]

--
Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF@sandelman.ca>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide