Plenary decision?

Dave Crocker dhc at dcrocker.net
Sat Jul 12 19:57:32 CEST 2003


Phillip,

Like most things, what matters is the detail.  Feel free to put together
a formal specification of the formatting rules to be following,
including character sets, format control constructs, etc.  Since you say
that all the necessary stuff already exists and is readily available,
I'm sure your specification document will be quite short.

However, in case you have not noticed, "HTML" is an ambiguous reference.  Clearly
anything specified for IETF documents must be precise and easily usable
by the broadest audience possible.  This includes text searchable, of
course.

In order to ensure ease of adoption and use, you should also consider
including citations to the open tools that are readily available, for
generating conformant documents, as well as tools for any other support
functions that will make users happy with it.

Until then, this debate is like so many other technical discussions in
the IETF, where folks debate concepts, utterly ignoring the concrete
details and minor matters of usability.

d/

ps. Folks, until we see a specification for an alternative format, could
we please constrain discussion of this topic to a recitation of the
requirements. Having to repeat this debate every few years seems rather
wasteful.



HBP> This is a straw man. HTML is a completely open format.

HBP> If you use XHTML and define the schema appropriately you can 
HBP> easily verify that no proprietary extensions have been used.

HBP> Alternatively there are plenty of tools to verify against a DTD.


d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>



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