On 3/21/2011 7:28 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
While I believe this is a fine objective, I want to point out
one issue: the big advantage of generic markup (XML or
otherwise) over finely-controlled formatting markup (nroff or
otherwise) is that the former eliminates the need for authors
(and others early in the publication process) to worry about
formatting and, indeed, keeps them away from it. The more one
goes down the path of letting (or, worse, encouraging or
requiring) authors fine-tune formatting and layout, the more we
reduce the advantages of generic markup. In the extreme case,
xml2rfc could deteriorate into what might be described as nroff
plus a bunch of macros in an XML-like syntax.
I don't think we are there or that we are at immediate risk of
going there. But I think we need to exercise caution.
In particular, if the idea is for the RFC Production Center to
be able to do detailed formatting (like page boundary tweaking)
using the general xml2rfc syntax and tools, I suggest that:
First, people think about whether there is a way to express the
requirements generically. For example, a lot of the page
boundary tweaking that the Production Center has to do is
because the xml2rfc processing engine isn't good enough at
handling widow and orphan text. If changes were made to the
engine to, e.g., bind section titles more closely to section
body text, and generally to permit the needed relationships to
be expressed better in generic markup, the requirement for
formatting-tweaking might be greatly reduced.
John, we're in total agreement here. And improved widow+orphan control
is definitely top of the list in my mind for what would help the RFC
Production Center the most -- doing it as a generic change within the
formatting engine without requiring additional markup directives is
certainly preferable to the other alternatives.
Second, if formatting control must be (further) introduced into
xml2rfc in order to make page layout control possible, can we do
it by inventing a processing directive family separate from
"<?rfc..."? If we had "<?rfc..." as something I-D authors were
expected to use a "<?rfcformat..." as something used only in
final formatting production, possibly even generating a comment
from nits checkers if present earlier, we would be, IMO, lots
better off --and lots closer to common publications industry
practice-- than mixing them together
I think this is an excellent idea.
Further discussion of specific improvements and how to accomplish them
should probably be done on the xml2rfc mailing list, as well as
meta-discussions on how to vet ideas for improvement.
Tony Hansen
t...@att.com
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