Re: [Rswg] draft-mcquistin-augmented-ascii-diagrams

[Colin Perkins <[e-mail]>]

On 28 Oct 2023, at 21:55, John R. Levine wrote:

>> The entire point of this draft is that it doesn't require any change 
>> to the RFC format. It doesn't need to be embedded into artwork, 
>> source code, media types, or anything of the sort. It's a structured 
>> way of using the existing RFC format, unchanged, and usable **today** 
>> (and, indeed, with any variant of the RFC format we've had in the 
>> last few decades).
>
> It would look OK in the text rendering, horrible in the HTML and PDF, 
> and would be a challenge to represent in XML since the line breaks are 
> critical.  (Unless you're secretly planning to wrap it in XML 
> <artwork> or the like.)

Authors have been including these types of header diagrams and 
descriptions in RFCs and Internet-drafts for decades. They render fine.

Yes, if using XML to prepare the draft, then the packet header diagrams 
are enclosed in <artwork> elements and the description lists use <dl> 
elements. This seems trivial, but we can add a paragraph to the draft to 
state it if it needs to be said.

Colin

> As I think I said in another message, my suggestion it to take out the 
> kludgery to try to embed the diagrams in text and just define the 
> format.
>
> We can separately figure out what kind of RFCXML artwork or sourcecode 
> elements would be the best container.
>
> R's,
> John