Re: Things that used to be clear (was Re: Evolving Documents (nee "Living Documents") side meeting at IETF105.)

[Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>]

On 7/9/2019 1:34 AM, Nico Williams wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 08, 2019 at 07:22:20PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
>> On 7/8/19 6:33 PM, Nico Williams wrote:
>>
>>> xml2rfc is great, but it lacks wiki-ness, though we could probably
>>> develop HTML+JS tooling to give xml2rfc that missing wiki-ness.
>> Actually I'd love it if xml2rfc were phased out in favor of something
>> better.   IMO it imposes a significant barrier to contributions, especially
>> from newer IETF participants, but really from everybody.   But I realize
>> that it's hard for IETF to build and maintain real document editing tools
>> that run on everybody's platforms.   It's hard enough to maintain xml2rfc. 
>> And I could certainly imagine worse tools, like (gasp!) Word.
>>
>> (I'm not exactly fond of wikis' UIs either.)
> Well, I don't really care what it is, as long as a) we get the
> typesetting right, b) we get the UI right.
>
> Markdown seems incomplete.
>
> XML with webby $EDITOR tooling would do.

Tooling is just one of the problems with XML2RFC. The real issue is that
XML2RFC is completely specific to the IETF. This translate into training
requirements for people who need to actually use that markup language,
absence of easy to use tools because the user pool is too small to
sustain development, and then a reliance on translators between an
easy-to-edit format and the publication. For example, a team of authors
would be using markdown and Github, and using a tool chain to produce
XML2RFC. But if a copy editor suggests updates to the XML text, these
updates cannot easily imported to the original markdown document, or to
the markdown starter for the "bis" project.

I understand why we adopted an XML format 20 years ago. That was better
than NROFF, and there was a hope that the whole publishing industry
would standardize on XML. It did not, and now the IETF has its very own
markup language.

-- Christian Huitema