[ih] Karl's post from Friday: Re: Interop as part of Internet History

[Brian E Carpenter]

Dave,

The example you quote was a bit of an oddball since it was
explicitly trying to change the way documents *in the IETF stream*
used the English language. I don't think that is what we are
are discussing here. 

Anyway, a test case is the way to go. 

Expanding on what I scribbled last night: Even with the new
shiny modern RFC format illustrated at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8899.html
there are considerable format restrictions: simple monochrome
diagrams, not even grayscale, restricted use of Unicode, limited
font effects, etc. In particular, there's only SVG graphics, so
no scope for bitmap graphics such as JPG. So no historic photos.

Full disclosure: Since I'm a current member of the Independent
Stream Editorial Board, there's a good chance I would be one
of the peer reviewers.

Regards
   Brian

On 15-Sep-20 01:59, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 9/14/2020 6:50 AM, Andrew G. Malis via Internet-history wrote:
>> The IETF can override an independent submission RFC that duplicates or
>> conflicts with IETF technical work (it can't be an end-around), but other
>> than that, the ISE and RFC Editor are free to use their own judgement on
>> what's suitable to publish.
> 
> 
> I co-authored a draft that suggested alternative language to use, in 
> place of words the IETF uses to indicate normative requirement. For 
> example using 'ought' in place of 'should'.  This was to avoid relying 
> on use of uppercase to indicate normative effect, though that was not 
> formally defined as required at the time.  (It is now.)
> 
> The belief that using upper-/lower-case as a semantic distinction is one 
> of the remarkable and continuing usability failures of computer science...
> 
> There was no current work and the draft sought Informational status.  It 
> was meant as advice, not requirement.
> 
> The ISE even got external review (including some folk reading this now) 
> who unanimously felt the draft conflicted with the IETF.  My best guess 
> is that this was because we'd made the mistake of use some of those 
> words in an apparently normative fashion.  But since there was no actual 
> dialogue between authors and reviewers, I can't be sure.
> 
> My point is that The Independent Stream for RFC has actual editorial 
> filtering. And editorial policy can vary quite a bit, depending on who 
> the editor is.
> 
> d/
>