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

[touch at isi.edu (Joe Touch)]

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