[Tools-discuss] Re: PDF [Re: Tools team meeting tomorrow 9 July 2024 1800 UTC]

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

> 
> And then the cost of maintaining the store - _updating_ the store when something fundamental changes that demands that we rerender the pdf (the basis becomes _all versions of all drafts in the archive_

… that have XML sources.
That should be some 60000 documents per rerender, or (conservatively) 330 CPU hours (~ two weeks if done sequentially on a single core).
You’d probably want to use a multi-core machine for that, and don’t do global rerenderings every week.

> at that point), and the time it takes to move the collective set of bits repeatedly when bots scrape them and individuals/bots do new blind full-rsyncs. All that can be optimized downwards and towards the edge, but dismissing this as a conversation about <$10/yr is incorrect.

The $10/yr was specifically about potential CPU savings from on-demand rendering.
Render-on-submit simply is easier to implement, and it gives much better results for the users, so I argued that this may be where we want to go.

(It also leads to more correct results, but I’m not going to open that discussion.)

> […on-demand…] Yes, that can (and must) be redesigned to make better use of modern web technologies, and my initial question is about whether we invest in a redesign that moves this to places that help more people more of the time, or if we are far enough along that people can build these locally, closer to the origin.

Redesign for render-up-front is simpler, I’d think.

> Your argument to keep them is to promote reviewing all the formats as if they are going to become RFCs (at least for xml source).

No.  I’m just saying some reviewers (like Marc and I) will use the PDF form, and making them jump through hoops is not what this organization should do.

> That would be better done _before_ submission wouldn't it?

By the authors, yes.  They need to have a reasonable pipeline set up anyway.

However, the **whole point** of putting an I-D on the I-D repository is to enable *others* to review it!

Grüße, Carsten