Subject: Re: Internet Draft Guidelines Require Precise Formatting?

From: "Jeffrey Race" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 11:03:29 +0700

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:05:32 -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
>2. anyone who thinks the ietf formatting requirements are not easy has
>not had to deal with very interesting formatting requirements.

It may not be difficult but it is not trivial and it may well be beyond
the ability of most non-techies.   In my word-processor (don't ask)
there are two ways to embed form feeds and carriage returns in ASCII
text files.  I never even knew this.  I had to consult the gurus on
the ap's discussion list to get the details.  I still have to review,
test, view the resulting files in DEBUG, and finally format.  This is
MANY hours of work.

Not complaining, just so let it be written.

Jeffrey Race

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From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 11:17:38 -0400

Jeffrey Race wrote:

>the ability of most non-techies.
>
OK, I'm going to say what many of us are thinking:

Sounds like a good filter to me.  Why would we want it non-techies 
writing Internet-Drafts? We already get a lot of borderline stuff; open 
it up to marketroids and we'll be swamped.

Maybe some people in large organizations want to turn their documents 
over to tech writers; but I'm not convinced that's a good idea for 
specs.  The more layers we have between the mind of the person 
implementing the spec and the minds of the people who conceived it, the 
more room there is for bugs to creep in.

-- 
/=============================================================\
|John Stracke      [email-masked]                      |
|Principal Engineer|http://www.centive.com                    |
|Centive           |My opinions are my own.                   |
|=============================================================|
|For an engineer, paranoia is not an affliction; it's a tool. |
\=============================================================/

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 12:43:31 -0400

> it up to marketroids and we'll be swamped.

Is this even an actual problem?  Can anybody point at an actual Good Idea
that didn't get anywhere because of lack of formatting ability?  (Yes, I
sympathize with the original poster's problem, but suspect that it's not as
big a hurdle as expected with the right macro sets for their software).

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From: Lloyd Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:40:08 +0100 (BST)

> the ability of most non-techies.

Given that internet-drafts are intended to be technical documents,
does this matter?

(I think we need difficult hurdles like this as a constraint on
applications area work.)

L.

> In my word-processor (don't ask) there are two ways to embed form
> feeds and carriage returns in ASCII text files.  I never even knew
> this.
> I had to consult the gurus on

<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/><[email-masked]>