Re: [Rfced-future] Welcome to the RFC Editor Future Development Program

[John Levine <[e-mail]>]

In article <75931C805FEF3FE1B51C5A0D@PSB> you write:
>> If there isn't a v3.n sub-version number in the XML files
>> today, there certainly should be.</heresyAlert>
>
>Agreed.  A bad solution but, given that we made the switch
>while, at least retrospectively, in experimental mode, almost
>certainly less bad than others.

My preference would be once we've defined the final XML vocabulary, go
back and adjust the XML (not the text) in the published RFCs to match.
Why force people for the next 50 years to live with our goofs?

The changes won't be very large since the changes since v3 are still
pretty minor.  FWIW all the changes so far are backward compatible
so all published RFCs are valid with the current version.  The changes
to the XML would be if we decide to back out or modify some of the
changs to the spec.

><probably-worseHeresyAlert>
>I know it is widely believed that HTML is so important in the
>world and so widely used that it will survive in its current
>form for centuries if not millennia, however, it is almost
>certainly the least stable of the three output  forms for at
>least two reasons. ...

Actually, I agree.  I am sure there will be something called HTML
for many decades (sort of like there's something called Fortran)
but it won't be all that much like what we have now.  That's why
the HTML is an output format, not canonical.

On the other hand, HTML is expressive enough that if we can get
a good quality translation of the XML into whatever HTML is now,
that should be the main place for proofreading.

R's,
John