[ih] The List: for historians or for history actors?

[Joe Touch]

"Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim" wrote:
> 
> Joe Touch wrote:
> 
> > The purpose of this list is to discuss issues of Internet
> > history. These are decidedly not Internet issues. Please
> > take the discussion to another list...
> 
> Oh, I see. May I know who should participate: the historians
> or the history actors?

Everyone may participate in the discussion of Internet history.

As noted before, discussions of other history, including
history of other technologies, etc., not directly relevant to
Internet history should be taken to other email lists or elsewhere.

> Is there any intention to writing down the discussion result?
> In what format? .DOC (historians main tool) ? .nroff (history
> actors main tool)?

We hope that, as information accumulates and is validated, list
participants will create condensed FAQs on specific issues, to
be posted on the Postel Center website. The FAQs will be in the
most common portable format, also used for RFCs - ASCII text.
Yes, most of the RFC formatting limitations will be assumed
(no overstrike, no backspace, 72 column, etc.)

FWIW, regarding RFCs are published in only two formats - ASCII
text (with some limitations) and Postscript, and only the ASCII
version is considered primary. It is certainly more convenient
to perform some editing on a document with internal formatting
info - which is why RFCs may be _submitted_ in nroff, used by the
RFC Editors for years. RFCs are not published as nroff, however.
Only the ASCII text is archival.

Joe