Re: [Tools-discuss] [rfc-i] Recommendation 9 from Results and analysis of the survey of I-D authors on formats and tools

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

Hi Leonard,

On 2021-02-05, at 15:35, Leonard Rosenthol <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the history, Carsten – very helpful.
>  
> So then kramdown-rfc is *both* a piece of software *and* an extension specification for Markdown.  Yes?    

Well, no.  It is a piece of software.  There is no specification, just some documentation.  (Well, that property is only different in magnitude from RFCXMLv3 at this point…)  Note that, as it is based on kramdown, there might be a need to specify that as well in some more detail than it is now.

> If so, does there exist a document that describes those extensions and their behavior?   Because, to me as a standards guy, that is the important thing.   Making sure that there is a formal specification which *anyone* can use to develop their own tooling.

The narrow waist of the RFC authoring process is RFCXMLv3, so I would hope that we build our tooling around that.  That is (supposed to be) more stable than a specific authoring tool.

> NOTE: I read the README at https://github.com/cabo/kramdown-rfc2629 (which I assume is the software we are referring to below) which seems like a great starting point for a language specification.

Indeed, but that would be work that still needs to be completed.  
(See also https://github.com/cabo/kramdown-rfc2629/wiki/Syntax .)
For some reason, there are always other I-Ds that need to be written...

Grüße, Carsten