Re: [xml2rfc] RfcMarkup not authoritative, HTML is gone?

[Paul Kyzivat <[e-mail]>]

On 9/16/19 11:53 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:
> On 16.09.2019 17:32, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>> On 9/16/19 10:46 AM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>>> On 2019-09-16 16:27, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>>>> On 9/16/19 1:22 AM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
>>>>> On 2019-09-14 11:41, Julian Reschke wrote:
>>>>> <snip>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> RfcMarkup has no official standing (and yes, I like it as well, 
>>>>>> and it
>>>>>> has served us well for a very long time). It apparently generates
>>>>>> XHTML,
>>>>>> but the content is served as text/html on tools.ietf.org. It might be
>>>>>> good to change it to produce valid HTML5.
>>>>>
>>>>> This in interesting and but also rather confusing since this is the by
>>>>> far most used method for communicating RFCs by developers.
>>>>
>>>> Do you have any data to backup this claim?
>>>
>>> No, OTOH, since I mostly work with JSON-based stuff, the documents are
>>> fairly recent.
>>
>> I don't recall every having seen a reference to an RfcMarkup.
> 
> Funny enough, that is the tool that is creating the HTNLized versions.

Interesting. But what ends up being referenced is the resulting HTML.

>>> What I'm sure that I have newer seen in wild are references to PDF RFCs
>>
>> Nor have I.
> 
> PDF RFCs have been possible in the past, but certainly not encouraged.
> 
>> The most common references I see are to either the "HTMLized" form, the
>> plain text, or the datatracker page.
>>
>> Personally I much prefer to work with the HTMLized form. It gives easy
>> ability to jump around in the document, the extra info in the header
>> including links to related tools, etc. and yet the text is almost
>> identical to the plain text form which makes it easy to jump back and
>> forth between a diff and the full document. It is also convenient to cut
>> and paste bits of the document into email. I much prefer this format to
>> the HTML format generated directly from xml.
> 
> There are multiple tools that do this, so it would be good to be more
> specific here (xml2rfc in v2 mode? in v3 mode? rfc2629.xslt?)

I'm speaking here mostly as a consumer of rfcs and drafts, though I also 
author them. As a consumer I just see the results, not how they were 
produced. But I presume most have been produced from v2 xml using 
xml2rfc in v2 mode.

I look forward to seeing what might be available as v3 comes into use. 
If there is a good side by side diff tool for the html format or 
directly for the xml, that will be a start. Even then it will be 
interesting to see how easy it is to move back and forth between the 
diff and the full text.

(Sometimes I would prefer the side by side diff to include the full text 
so that there is complete context. But other times that would make it 
very convenient to see what has changed.)

Note that I'm only relating this to the way *I* have learned to work 
using the available tools. Perhaps new and better ways to work will be 
possible with the new format and related tools.

	Thanks,
	Paul