Subject: IPP> Re: New Internet-Draft Internet Printing Protocol 1.0: Rationale

From: Carl-Uno Manros <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 17:32:41 PDT

At 11:52 AM 7/17/97 PDT, you wrote:
>
>Carl-Uno,
>
>Just for your information, I am currently working on your
>Internet-Draft <draft-ietf-ipp-rat-00.txt>.
>
>I'll probably send an announcement to the entire IETF
>regarding your I-D sometime tomorrow or the next day.
>
>Please do not hesitate to contact me directly if you have
>any question/concern at <[email-masked]> 
>       
>Kind Regards,
>Cynthia 
>------------------------------------------------------
>Cynthia Clark, IETF Internet-Drafts Administrator
>E-mail Address preference:  <[email-masked]>
>-------------------------------------------------------
>
>

Cynthia,

thanks for the information.  I understand that you must be very busy right
now getting all the documents out before Munich.  Unfortunately, we will
need to give you newer versions of most of our documents one more time
before the July 30 deadline, but as some of them are still in their first
incarnation, we are  trying to get at least some feedback on the newer
documents before we send you the "final" ones towards the end of the month.  

Our biggest problem is to convert documents written in WinWord to the IETF
ASCII format which is a non-trivial task. We are actually just now working
on an informational RFC document, which describes the conversion process
from WinWord to IETF format step-by-step.  This might become one of your
most popular documents once it is finished!  I hope you realize that some
90 % of the world's desktops and portables have WinWord as an application,
and that only UNIX "hackers" can produce the IETF format with relative ease. 
Time for a rethink in the IETF?

Best regards,

Carl-Uno

Regards,

Carl-Uno
Carl-Uno Manros
Principal Engineer - Advanced Printing Standards - Xerox Corporation
701 S. Aviation Blvd., El Segundo, CA, M/S: ESAE-231
Phone +1-310-333 8273, Fax +1-310-333 5514
Email: [email-masked]

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 18:16:21 -0400

> most popular documents once it is finished!  

At my request, someone from Microsoft has also recently produced such
a document.  I've asked the Internet-Drafts people and RFC Editor to
make them available to people in the same way as similar documents
describing how to generate RFCs using other word processors.  (I'll
forward you a copy of this document in a separate message.)

> I hope you realize that some 90 % of the world's desktops and
> portables have WinWord as an application, and that only UNIX
> "hackers" can produce the IETF format with relative ease.  Time for
> a rethink in the IETF?

IETF exists to allow network protocols to be implemented across all
platforms, not to produce protocols for a single vendor's platforms.
IETF documents need to be readable on all platforms and printable on
all printers.  Plain ASCII text is the only format which is so widely
usable.

Even if 90% of the world's desktops and portables have WinWord
installed (which I doubt), this doesn't translate into 90% of the
world's protocol developers.  Besides, ASCII is usable on nearly 100%
of the world's computing systems, and the other 10% is an important
audience.

I disagree that only UNIX hackers can easily produce the IETF format.
All it takes to submit an internet-draft is an ordinary text editor.
Last I knew, every DOS and Windows box came with one installed, and I
know they're available for Macs as well.  Lots of people seem to use
them to write bare HTML (much to my surprise) because it gives them
more flexibility than is available with HTML editors.

The Internet-Draft format does require short lines and page breaks,
but it's hardly necessary that these be done perfectly -- the RFC
Editor generally has to do some minor editing anyway before the
document can be published, and can easily take care of such cleanup.
Lines can be broken by hitting the RETURN key at the end of each line,
and page breaks can be inserted by a simple post-processor.  (Even
nroff requires post-processing to clean up page breaks, so UNIX
hackers are no better off.)  Text editors don't do section numbering
either, but even though nroff does have section numbering, I've hardly
ever used it when writing RFCs.

I can understand how experienced WinWord users might feel cramped when
using a text editor to write an RFC, which is the very reason that I
asked people from Microsoft to provide some advice for using WinWord.
But UNIX users also feel cramped.  Much like WinWord, nroff has to be
carefully tweaked to get the page length and margins right for RFCs
Much like winword, nroff wants to produce overstrikes and add extra
lines at the top of a page which much be removed in postprocessing.
It's easy once you know the tricks and have the tools in place, but
this is true for both nroff and WinWord.  The only significant
difference is that nroff users already know the tricks, while WinWord
users are just now learning them.

The RFC format is a compromise, deliberately chosen to be universally
readable, at the expense of being somewhat difficult to produce.  Even
today, it seems to me that this is still the right tradeoff.

Keith