Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!NRI.RESTON.VA.US!rdroms
From: rdroms@NRI.RESTON.VA.US
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Comment on RFC1124 (?)
Message-ID: <8909291538.AA01529@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 28 Sep 89 20:42:31 GMT
References: 
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 38


Comments on suggested solutions:

  o Keep RFCs in a text-only format, and provide hints to a PostScriptizer
    that knows what parts of the text should be filled, what parts of the
    text are actually character graphics (like | and - ), and what parts
    are tables.

PostScriptizing an ASCII RFC doesn't sound like much of a win - you've
already lost all the graphics info ... there's nothing to reconstruct.

  o Restrict the types of PostScript that are acceptable to those that can
    be textized by running them through a filter.  That way, a user can
    reconstruct a reasonable text version of the RFC.

Reverse engineering ASCII from PostScript sounds like an interesting,
but hard, problem.  You'll need to guess what parts are straight
ASCII, and can be re-paragraphed, what parts are tables and must be
left verbatim, and what parts are graphics and must be approximated
with ASCII text.

It is clearly advantageous to have the ability to view and search
through RFCs on-line.  For the time being, we might want to try a
fourth solution:

  o Require the author to submit an ASCII version of the RFC - and
    allow an optional PostScript version.

nroff/troff solves the problem by using two translators - nroff
generates ASCII and troff generates PostScript from the same course.
Is there a version of nroff that behave rationally when confronted by
grpahics (e.g., pic output) input?  Is there an equivalent to nroff
for TeX?

- Ralph Droms                             (On leave from Bucknell University)
  NRI                                     rdroms@nri.reston.va.us
  1895 Preston White Drive, Suite 100     (703) 620-8990
  Reston, VA 22091                        (703) 620-0913 (fax)