Re: [Tools-discuss] Let's not be hostile to authors

Just speaking as a document author, I've written my share of drafts over
the many years, in just about every format that the IETF has supported -
plain text, nroff, generated nroff (nroffedit), various versions of the
Word template, various versions of XML, generated XML via KramDown.
and others that I've probably forgotten.

My goal as an author is to write drafts to get my ideas expressed without
having to worry about the syntax for a pseudo-programming language as well.

Currently, I've found that KramDown comes closest to meeting that need, and
I'm very happy to let others (thanks, Carsten!) keep up with the current
state of XML. But what would be really cool would be something similar to
what we had with nroffedit - you just type what needs to be written, and
the tool makes it look nice in real time. and then generates what's needed
to be submitted to the process in the syntax of the day.

I get that the transition to v3 is important for the process, and makes
things better behind the curtain. But I'm sure the great majority of drafts
authors really don't really care, just want to get their ideas expressed as
easily as possible, and are happy to leave the programming details behind
the curtain where they belong.

Cheers,
Andy

On Sun, Jun 27, 2021 at 2:26 AM Carsten Bormann <cabo@tzi.org> wrote:

> On 27. Jun 2021, at 04:40, John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Excellent. Is there any reason not to run the v2 to v3 converter
> automatically?
> >
> > We really want people to stop using v2.  It's obsolete and missing some
> semantic features of v3.
>
> John,
>
> let me be blunt here.
>
> The attitude that it is OK to be hostile to document authors in order to
> further some meaningless abstract goal is completely unacceptable and has
> to stop.
>
> There are good reasons to continue submitting v2 or v2-with-v3 documents.
>
> For people actually authoring in XML, the version control history of all
> but the most recently started documents is in v2.  A wholesale v3
> conversion loses all that history.
>
> For people using a tool to generate the XML, it is unacceptable to require
> their tools to generate exactly the v3 of the day, in particular as xml2rfc
> has a perfect v3 generator inside, which by the nature of the process is
> more likely to stay in sync with the ongoing fixes to v3.
>
> And, in case I haven't been clear enough, the needs (and even more so the
> wants!) of the RPC are entirely secondary to those of the authors here, as
> 98 % of the work on a document happens before the RPC gets it, and the
> resources feeding that work are non-renewable.
>
> (And yes, the abstract goal of furthering the v3 transition is not
> entirely meaningless in the long run, but we are *way* off from that goal
> being a realistic short-term objective.  And the feature of xml2rfc to be
> more permissive in its converter input than the v3 publishing format must
> *never* go away, at least as long as we consider the time and quality of
> work of our authors and tool makers to be a precious resource.)
>
> Grüße, Carsten
>
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