[Tools-arch] Recommendation 10: One-stop shop tool

[Jay Daley <[e-mail]>]

=  Recommendation

Recommendation 10:  A ‘one-stop shop’ tool should be investigated. 

=  Commentary

By a ‘one-stop shop’ tool we meant a tool with the following characteristics:

	• GUI based, single tool that works on most OSs and allows an author to do everything they need on I-D drafting/processing in that one place. 

	• WYSIWYG interface that hides the complexity of the underlying XML, in much the same way that any modern word processor does.  (This does not have to be the only interface as some may want to work on the underlying XML).

	• Has a plugin mechanism so that any I-D processing tools can be added in for direct invocation.

	• Interacts with the Datatracker for submission and retrieval of I-Ds and associated metadata.

	• Interacts with ‘official’ IETF GitHub repositories, including for the processing of issues, pull requests and other collaboration features. (Also see recommendation 13 below)

	• Directly supports the AUTH48 process.

In order to produce such a tool, the various I-D processing tools would need to be refactored to work as plugins, going back to the concept under recommendation 6 with them all implemented as APIs, supporting any variety of client.

Is this something the TAS Team would like to start the ball rolling on recognising that there would be lots of community discussion required?



-- 
Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
[e-mail]