Fixed font v multiple fonts

[James Seng]

Just have another thought, altho I may be over-generalizing...but bear 
with me for a moment.

Some standard organisation achieve consensus by doing a UNION of the 
ideas, ie, if A propose X and B propose Y, so long there is no conflict, 
we put both X & Y into the standard.

During voting, A dont object to Y if B dont object to X and vice versa 
(aka horse trading). The results is that it _is_ possible to achieve 
100% consensus altho we have a bloated standard.

IETF on the other hands prefers to do INTERSECTION of the ideas, ie, if 
A propose X and B propose Y, we take only the intersection of the ideas 
where there "rough consensus" and throw out those (from X or Y) that 
have does not have rough consensus.

While this remove horse trading problem and gives us a leaner standards, 
it also means we have to live with only very baseline standards, and in 
some cases, everyone equally pissed too (aka distribution of pain).

Which is comes back to the topic of "ASCII text" vs "other fancy 
document format". At this moment, we have rough consensus that ASCII 
text, with its limitation, is useful for the IETF. OTOH, there is no 
rough consensus for any other document format yet. (notice we doing 
INTERSECTION of ideas).

Should we also allow other document format? If no, why not? (And in 
certain ways, people have absolute reasons to be angry). But if yes, are 
we ready to change the way we do this?

Or a higher level question: Is the current way we process ideas, ie, 
taking only the parts which have rough consensus and leaving out those 
that dont have, a problem?

-James Seng

Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:

>>Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
>>
>>>Lars does not have the right to impose his decision on me.
> 
> 
> Lars is free to present his work as shoddily as he chooses. He is not free
> to impose his choices on me.
> 
>