xml2rfc/xslt in Prague, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 25.03.2011 04:35, John Levine wrote: ... Hijacking this thread...: There'll be an xml2rfc related session on Sunday: 1500-1650 Tools for Creating Internet-Drafts Tutorial - Congress Hall I ...which I'll try to attend (and maybe demo stuff, and answer questions around the XSLT

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

--On Thursday, March 24, 2011 02:14 +0100 Stefan Santesson ste...@aaa-sec.com wrote: I can't escape the feeling that this discussion of using markup language editing to produce RFCs, is a bit upside down. I'm much more concerned with draft writers having to deal with markup syntax than I

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

I know that XML is the wave of the future, but I just want to give Stefan a plug as a happy user that NroffEdit makes the mechanical and formatting part of writing drafts almost effortless. Cheers, Andy ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

--On Friday, March 25, 2011 13:06 -0400 Andrew G. Malis agma...@gmail.com wrote: I know that XML is the wave of the future, but I just want to give Stefan a plug as a happy user that NroffEdit makes the mechanical and formatting part of writing drafts almost effortless. And, had it

Re: Document formatting, was Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

What I'm opposed to, and what prompted my note, was purely what I consider a misguided effort to turn the xml2rfc model from generic markup into a formatting language. For the record, I entirely agree. The reason I've proposed adding formatting twiddles to xml2rfc is so that the RFC Ed can

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Great thoughts from many people. I just want to clarify a few things as I see that my message is slightly misunderstood. Firstly: The core of my opinion is NOT that I think people should convert to nroff encoding or XML coding or XHTML encoding or whatever encoding as editing language. I don't

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

I can't escape the feeling that this discussion of using markup language editing to produce RFCs, is a bit upside down. I'm much more concerned with draft writers having to deal with markup syntax than I am about drafters trying to put a page break in a sensible location, or format their

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Ned, On 11-03-24 9:48 PM, Ned Freed ned.fr...@mrochek.com wrote: I can't escape the feeling that this discussion of using markup language editing to produce RFCs, is a bit upside down. I'm much more concerned with draft writers having to deal with markup syntax than I am about drafters

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

But you are probably pretty experienced user and you probably spent some time setting up your environment to get where you are. The answer is no to both. When I first started using xml2rfc I don't think I had written a single line of XML. As for setting up the editing environment, I installed a

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

I believe having to deal with markup syntax poses a significant barrier to those not as experienced as you. From long experience, I can assure you that whatever you are used to seems obvious and natural, and whatever you aren't seems strange and difficult. I think nroff is swell, having been

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

I can't escape the feeling that this discussion of using markup language editing to produce RFCs, is a bit upside down. I'm much more concerned with draft writers having to deal with markup syntax than I am about drafters trying to put a page break in a sensible location, or format their text in

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

--On Thursday, March 17, 2011 12:36 -0400 Tony Hansen t...@att.com wrote: If we're going to put more work into xml2rfc, I would much rather figure out what the production people are doing with nroff that xml2rfc doesn't currenty do, and add twiddeles so they can do that in xml2rfc and skip

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

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

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 21.03.2011 12:28, John C Klensin wrote: ... +1000 John, thanks for this good explanation! Best regards, Julian ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 17.03.2011 01:07, Stefan Santesson wrote: ... This is not correct. The automatic ToC function (and now since version 1.40 also the automated reference function) operates using commands hidden behind Nroff comments. A standard NROFF compiler will ignore the comments and process the ToC as if

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Julian Reschke wrote: On 17.03.2011 01:07, Stefan Santesson wrote: ... This is not correct. The automatic ToC function (and now since version 1.40 also the automated reference function) operates using commands hidden behind Nroff comments. A standard NROFF compiler will ignore the

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 17.03.2011 14:59, Martin Rex wrote: Julian Reschke wrote: On 17.03.2011 01:07, Stefan Santesson wrote: ... This is not correct. The automatic ToC function (and now since version 1.40 also the automated reference function) operates using commands hidden behind Nroff comments. A standard

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Julian Reschke wrote: the context of this was a discussion how to generate a ToC using NROFF. My comment was regarding the claim that NRoffEdit somehow achieves this; it does not. It just does exactly what xml2rfc does: it paginates itself and adjusts the ToC accordingly. Once you feed

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 17.03.2011 16:36, Martin Rex wrote: Julian Reschke wrote: the context of this was a discussion how to generate a ToC using NROFF. My comment was regarding the claim that NRoffEdit somehow achieves this; it does not. It just does exactly what xml2rfc does: it paginates itself and adjusts

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 3/17/2011 11:36 AM, Martin Rex wrote: Julian Reschke wrote: the context of this was a discussion how to generate a ToC using NROFF. My comment was regarding the claim that NRoffEdit somehow achieves this; it does not. It just does exactly what xml2rfc does: it paginates itself and adjusts

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Julian, I'm not sure what you have in mind that would change the page breaks. NroffEdit accomplish this by iterating the task a number of times. The following steps are executed: 1) Analyzing the Nroff document to determine which headings are present and their data. 2) Compiles the text

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

OK, I understand what you say now. All they have to do is to run it through NroffEdit once more after they are done with their nroff editing. They don't use NroffEdit as their main tool for nroff editing, but they do have it and use it (at least last time I talked to them). But agreed, NroffEdit

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 17.03.2011 16:52, Stefan Santesson wrote: Julian, I'm not sure what you have in mind that would change the page breaks. The RFC Production Center sometimes adds forced page breaks to manage vertical white space. When they do that in the nroff file, the ToC will get out of sync.

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 17.03.2011 16:55, Stefan Santesson wrote: OK, I understand what you say now. All they have to do is to run it through NroffEdit once more after they are done with their nroff editing. They don't use NroffEdit as their main tool for nroff editing, but they do have it and use it (at least last

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

If this (running NroffEdit as a postprocessing step) could be established as standard procedure, this would simplify the output target for the xml2rfc SoW. The current xml2rfc already does pagination and generates the TOC for the text version, so the extra work to emit them surrounded by nroff

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 3/17/2011 12:26 PM, John Levine wrote: If this (running NroffEdit as a postprocessing step) could be established as standard procedure, this would simplify the output target for the xml2rfc SoW. The current xml2rfc already does pagination and generates the TOC for the text version, so the

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

It's up to them, but it could easily be done if they want to. It could even easily be done even if there is no nroff since NroffEdit can generate nroff from text and then generate the ToC. /Stefan On 11-03-17 5:03 PM, Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de wrote: On 17.03.2011 16:55, Stefan

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Julian, Sorry for an awfully late response, but just spotted this and thought I should clarify as author of the NroffEdit tool. NRoffEdit is an all-in-one wysiwyg tool in Java that maintains the TOC for you (within the .nroff source itself). Which will only work properly as long the

spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 30.12.2010 06:31, Doug Ewell wrote: Martin Rex wrote: Everyone who looks at writing I-Ds should also seriously consider xml2rfc. :-) Only if he is in for a lot of pain and trouble... I used xml2rfc (the online version, not installing it) to write RFC 4645 and 5646, including numerous

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

But while we're at the topic of *running* xml2rfc: I always advise people to run it locally; One problem is that the default way of doing references in RFC 2629 XML appears to perform an online fetch of the reference information for each build, with no caching whatsoever. If you do have to

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 30.12.2010 10:50, Carsten Bormann wrote: But while we're at the topic of *running* xml2rfc: I always advise people to run it locally; One problem is that the default way of doing references in RFC 2629 XML appears to perform an online fetch of the reference information for each build,

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

My personal preference would be for Google docs to change their HTML generator so that it preserves the structure of the layout (H1, H2 etc) rather than just the presentation. That way we could have multiple people edit the same doc without having to swap files about in email. As a document

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 30.12.2010 12:43, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: My personal preference would be for Google docs to change their HTML generator so that it preserves the structure of the layout (H1, H2 etc) rather than just the presentation. That way we could have multiple people edit the same doc without

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Yes, that's why I always recommend not to use that style. But hardwiring the references in the XML leads to manual updating (and forgetting that). Having a tool for that is useful here (which is why kramdown-rfc2629 does this). BTW, if you are on a Mac, get one of the package managers

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 30.12.2010 16:03, Carsten Bormann wrote: Yes, that's why I always recommend not to use that style. But hardwiring the references in the XML leads to manual updating (and forgetting that). Having a tool for that is useful here (which is why kramdown-rfc2629 does this). I dislike automatic

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 30 Dec 2010, at 11:43, Phillip Hallam-Baker hal...@gmail.com wrote: As a document format, the XML2RFC format is terrible. It uses all the abominable features of SGML. Rather disappointingly for a format intended for use by a standards organization it is different to HTML in ways that

Re: spec gen tools, was: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 30.12.2010 21:25, Tony Finch wrote: On 30 Dec 2010, at 11:43, Phillip Hallam-Bakerhal...@gmail.com wrote: As a document format, the XML2RFC format is terrible. It uses all the abominable features of SGML. Rather disappointingly for a format intended for use by a standards organization it

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Gosh, we managed to have that entire discussion without a single person comparing it to emacs vs vi. oopsie. On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.dewrote: On 28.12.2010 18:26, Martin Rex wrote: ... Everyone who looks at writing I-Ds should seriously consider

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Julian Reschke wrote: On 28.12.2010 18:26, Martin Rex wrote: ... Everyone who looks at writing I-Ds should seriously consider looking at NRoffEdit before deciding which document format and tool to use. ... Everyone who looks at writing I-Ds should also seriously consider xml2rfc.

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Martin Rex m...@sap.com To: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de Cc: ietf@ietf.org; barryle...@computer.org Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 6:25 PM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... I tried to use xml2rfc once and gave up after 3 hours

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Martin Rex wrote: Everyone who looks at writing I-Ds should also seriously consider xml2rfc. :-) Only if he is in for a lot of pain and trouble... I used xml2rfc (the online version, not installing it) to write RFC 4645 and 5646, including numerous drafts, without any significant pain or

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 28.12.2010 18:26, Martin Rex wrote: ... Everyone who looks at writing I-Ds should seriously consider looking at NRoffEdit before deciding which document format and tool to use. ... Everyone who looks at writing I-Ds should also seriously consider xml2rfc. :-)

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

# empty out toc.input toc.input # run once to get a sample ToC, but page numbers will be off nroff file /dev/null 2 toc.input # run again to get proper page numbers into toc.input nroff file /dev/null 2 toc.input # run a 3rd time to get the right output, ignoring stderr

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

You know, this whole discussion renews my total puzzlement at why anyone would use nroff instead of something else... anything else. The good thing about nroff or troff is that with enough fiddling, you can get it to do anything, The bad thing about nroff or troff is that with enough fiddling,

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 22.12.2010 18:21, Barry Leiba wrote: # empty out toc.input toc.input # run once to get a sample ToC, but page numbers will be off nroff file /dev/null 2 toc.input # run again to get proper page numbers into toc.input nroff file /dev/null 2 toc.input # run a 3rd

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Barry Leiba barryle...@computer.org Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 11:26 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... Clarifying: the reason why I'm researching

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Clarifying: the reason why I'm researching is that apparently some people think it would be good to have a replacement for xml2rfc.tcl that *emits* nroff (only - as opposed to plain text/nroff/html as the TCL code does today). Though I happen to like nroff  (I also like anchovies) please

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 15.07.2009 11:13, Julian Reschke wrote: Randy Presuhn wrote: ... No need to manually edit. Use the macros or awk / sed to spit the toc into a file which can be inserted into the correct position by the .so nroff directive. This will result in a table of contents in the correct position.

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

So, I do understand how generate the ToC at the end, and I'll probably grok .so, but what is needed to extract the ToC into a separate file? Is there anything in nroff supporting that, or were you just referring to a set of homegrown tools? Nroff isn't a document formatter, it's an

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 8:43 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... So, I do understand how generate the ToC

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi John, thanks a *lot* for the explanations. More below. On 21.12.2010 19:59, John Levine wrote: So, I do understand how generate the ToC at the end, and I'll probably grok .so, but what is needed to extract the ToC into a separate file? Is there anything in nroff supporting that, or were you

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

.Tc 2 4.2 12 Efficient lossless packet compression In this example, this is second level heading 4.2 on page 12. It's easy enough to generate whatever sort of TOC you want, and the usual nroff page break stuff does the pagination. So is .TC plain nroff or in some package? It's a macro.

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

The usual way to generate a TOC is to use .tm directives which write the TOC to the standard error, which you capture in a file using the usual Unix shell redirection. Then you rerun nroff using .so to include that file up at the front where the TOC goes. That's what I understood from previous

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

On 21.12.2010 20:22, Randy Presuhn wrote: Hi - From: Julian Reschkejulian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhnrandy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing Listietf@ietf.org Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 8:43 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... So

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 1:17 PM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... Here's one incarnation of what I used

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

The magic directive is .tm: .tm string After skipping initial blanks, string (rest of the line) is read in copy mode and written on the standard error. For anything you want in the table of contents, put in this line at the proper place (or include it in a

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Presuhn wrote: Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... And of course you can do

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Stefan Santesson wrote: ... I don't want to save my current edit to a file and enter it into some kind of tool to see what I write. I want to see it while I'm editing. E.g. what happens if I include a page break here? Does it look better if I add an extra line or should I keep this section on

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

I guess you are right about that. And I'm mostly the same way. Still I find things when I see the finished product that I want to tweak before submission. Even if I like the result, I mostly end up doing at least 10 iterations of Save - compile - open in viewer - check result, before I'm done.

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Stefan Santesson wrote: I guess you are right about that. And I'm mostly the same way. Still I find things when I see the finished product that I want to tweak before submission. Even if I like the result, I mostly end up doing at least 10 iterations of Save - compile - open in viewer - check

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Julian, For me this is not about nroff versus xml and I'm really not trying to convince anyone to move away from xml. I meant to discuss how to do TOC and other formatting for those who like to edit in nroff. /Stefan On 09-07-16 1:17 PM, Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de wrote: Stefan

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Stefan Santesson ste...@aaa-sec.com To: Donald Eastlake d3e...@gmail.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 6:03 PM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... All I have managed to get across are ways to generate

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Randy Presuhn wrote: ... No need to manually edit. Use the macros or awk / sed to spit the toc into a file which can be inserted into the correct position by the .so nroff directive. This will result in a table of contents in the correct position. There is the possibility that if the number

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 2:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... For editing a document, particularly

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi, Randy Presuhn wrote: Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 2:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... For editing

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... Point is: nroff and xml2rfc share

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Randy Presuhn wrote: With respect to boilerplate, xml2rfc lacks this advantage. *It* generates the boilerplate; the user has no way of knowing whether the option present in the source file will result in the same output text today as it did yesterday. From a configuration management / As far

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... Point is: nroff and xml2rfc share

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... And of course you can do

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Randy Presuhn wrote: Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... And of course you

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Randy Presuhn wrote: Hi - From: Julian Reschke julian.resc...@gmx.de To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:13 AM Subject: Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff ... And of course you can

Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

As I know there are quite some Nroff users still out there, this might be welcome news. While I quite like Nroff for its easy to use and readability. one of the problem that always have annoyed me with Nroff is to manually update the Table of Content. This is something where xml2rfc have a great

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

It's trivial to define nroff macros to create a Table of Contents. Donald = Donald E. Eastlake 3rd +1-508-634-2066 (home) 155 Beaver Street Milford, MA 01757 USA d3e...@gmail.com On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Stefan Santessonste...@aaa-sec.com wrote: As I

Re: Automatically updated Table of Contents with Nroff

Sounds interesting. Do you by any chance have a source where this trivial information is available? All I have managed to get across are ways to generate a TOC in the end of the document, that you have to move manually. When doing that move, your page numbering and formatting may change.