Re: [art] New RFCs text formatting

[Brian Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Understood, but since the new canonical form is XML there is a much harder
issue.

Regards
    Brian
    (via tiny screen & keyboard)

On Mon, 2 Dec 2019, 09:48 Scott O. Bradner, <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 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
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
>
>