[rfc-i] draft-flanagan-rfc-framework-02 composition tools

Current Word does not support the "metadata" that XML does right now.

That can be taken as a deficiency of Word.

It can also be taken as a deficiency of the XML - that it cannot be
easily generated from Word, or that it's not clear that some such
metadata is even important.

Joe

On 11/3/2014 4:39 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> Having used MS Word on some large I-Ds I have to say that I am getting
> tired of the assertion that the only folks for whom Word won't work are
> the one Joe cites below.  In one case, we found using Word so unweildy
> that we hand-converted it into XML.
> 
> I am not asking the Joe Touch stop using Word.  But the assertions that
> it is workable for the bulk of us make assumptions that are not
> supported by the evidence.
> 
> If the request is that we plan for conversion tools to permit authoring
> in MS Word, with the understanding that it will be less effective since
> there is no way to capture the original metadata cleanly in MS Word, but
> instead the tools must guess the values, I could see us including that
> in the migration plans.
> 
> Yours,
> Joel
> 
> On 11/3/14, 7:29 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 11/3/2014 2:54 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
>>> On Nov 3, 2014, at 4:50 PM, Joe Touch <touch at isi.edu> wrote:
>>>> I agree, but why do we want to use xml2rfc if it boxes us into things
>>>> like this?
>>>
>>> You saying this as if you were proposing some alternative that would
>>> box us in less.   But you haven't made a real proposition--all we
>>> have is that you think Word would work.
>>
>> I want a solution for which Word can be used as an authoring tool.
>> Support for authoring tools hasn't been a key factor in the progress to
>> date.
>>
>>> But we know that Word
>>> doesn't address a great many of the very definite requirements we
>>> have articulated; in particular, it would not be usable for some
>>> significant percentage of the IETF membership.
>>
>> The percentage of the IETF that does not use Windows, MacOS, or Linux,
>> agreed.
>>
>>> And it boxes us in far worse than xml2rfc does.    You said we should
>>> aim higher, but we *are* aiming higher than Word.   It just depends
>>> on what you mean by "higher."   You are putting usability for
>>> Microsoft Word users as the highest value, and trying to drag
>>> everything else through that wormhole, but first, that's not our user
>>> base, and second, usability for document editors is not the only or
>>> even the most important requirement for this solution.
>>
>> I have seen a lot of requirements driven from the need for automatic
>> extraction of document structure or contents, but have not seen a good
>> rationale as to the need to do that from documents.
>>
>>> So this is why you aren't getting the traction that you think you
>>> should be getting here: you are pushing a solution to the wrong
>>> problem.
>>
>> The problem is DOCUMENTATION.
>>
>> This isn't a programming project.
>>
>> Joe
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