[rfc-i] draft-iab-xml2rfc-02 - alignment of sourcecode

[paul.hoffman at vpnc.org (Paul Hoffman)]

On 3 Feb 2016, at 21:07, Paul Kyzivat wrote:

> On 2/3/16 5:47 PM, Joe Hildebrand (jhildebr) wrote:
>> On 2/2/16, 3:17 PM, "rfc-interest on behalf of Julian Reschke" 
>> <rfc-interest-bounces at rfc-editor.org on behalf of 
>> julian.reschke at gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> It depends on what the formatter does with the indentation 
>>> information.
>>>
>>> In any format other than plain text, it can easily style the actual 
>>> code
>>> so that it's clear what's indentation and what's content.
>>>
>>> See, for instance:
>>> <http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc7230.html#rfc.section.2.1.p.8>
>>
>> What I don't understand yet is why you would want to indent different 
>> sourcecode elements differently from one another.  Without more 
>> explanation, your example above looks to me like a perfectly valid 
>> approach for all of your sourcecode elements to be styled that way.  
>> I see the x:indent-with="  " in the XML source, but I don't see how 
>> that affected the HTML, which has <pre class="text">?  Can you please 
>> walk me through your vision?
>
> When it fits, I am likely to want the soucecode indentation to float 
> with the indentation of the text that surrounds it. But I may want to 
> override that if it doesn't fit well that way.

Again, the question is what value this floating has. Are you thinking 
only of the text-only output (as compared to the HTML and PDF that are 
likely to be much more widely used)?

> OR, I may want to treat it as a block and apply exactly the same 
> alignment controls that are available for artwork. (And if the 
> sourcecode lines are kind of long, then "right" alignment might be my 
> preferred choice - to get it indented as much as I can while not 
> truncating anything.)
>
> Which way is a matter of taste.
>
> Right now I get neither option.

Correct. It was a conscious decision to remove formatter hints 
throughout the design other than for things that are clearly artwork. 
The text in RFCs (as compared to say, books) has strong semantic 
meaning, and having the output of different RFCs look different because 
of different authors' visual preferences will make them harder to 
understand for the intended readership.

--Paul Hoffman