Re: [Tools-discuss] Why post text and not XML? (was: I-D statistics)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Saturday, March 16, 2024 17:13 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
> More confusingly, there are still a few current drafts
> submitted as txt only. No XML at all. I wonder why we still
> allow that, and what tools people are using. Doesn't this
> create busywork if the document progresses?

As one of the offenders, I think I have explained this before
but let me do it again.  Short answer: it is a side-effect of
work that makes the document development process in WGs much
more efficient in part because it makes "we have been over that
before, in YYYYMM, and reached those conclusions because..."
input much easier and more accessible.  It also helps in
preparation of accurate final change summaries and
acknowledgment easier and more accurate.  The "tools" are an
emacs-clone editor with an XML mode and a handful of personal
macros and templates.   The only "busywork" is stripping that
stuff out just before the XML is handed to the RPC.

   =================

For anyone interested and in the hope of not having to repeat
this again...

Especially for long, complex, and long-lived documents,
especially those that are replacements, significant updates for
earlier documents, or merges of others, I use extensive comments
in the XML to track changes and decisions.   Other comments are
used to provide information to, or prepare for discussions with,
the RPC about why particular text phrasing and constructions or
document organizations were chosen, etc.  With one current
document, those comments add up to more that 30% of the size of
the XML file.  Some of those comments are over 20 years old and
have been carried forward from xml2rfc v1 files associated with
previous documents.

Why not just post all of that information?  Because, given
experience with the IETF community, it would be only a matter of
time before someone, probably several someones, decided to
nit-pick details of the comments or complain about the incorrect
or unkind terminology in some of them, even some of the
20-year-old ones.  They are personal notes and neither I nor the
community would need the wasted time that could be spent on the
substantive parts of the document or on other work.  For those
and other reasons, I don't want to share those comments, and
hence the XML, with the community.  Too many of them are
personal notes.  They could be edited into generally acceptable
forms, but it would take significant work and time that could be
better spent in other ways.  

When the I-D is approved and handed off to the RPC for
production and publishing, I prepare a version of the RFCXML
file that contains only the comments that are likely to be
helpful to the RPC or in conversations with them.   Certainly
those that are relevant only to prior RFCs that the new document
replaces are gone.  However that is a comment-by-comment editing
job that typically takes some hours, not something I want to do
with every I-D posting.

Could I establish conventions within the comments that would
permit automatic removal such that there would be the
copy/version I work on and an easily generated redacted one I
could post?  Yes, probably, but that would be extra work too.
Moreover, over the quarter-century since xml2rfc was introduced,
my conventions have changed -- I have even used different
conventions during the WG I-D development period and during IETF
LC.  If I had perfect foresight around 2000, maybe, but...

So, not going to happen.  And if someone makes a rule that the
XML must (MUST?) be posted, I've authored or edited my last long
and/or complex and/or updating or replacing document.   Find
someone else to do it.  Or conclude the IETF is not interested
in the topic area any more.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I suspect I'm not.

    john