Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!RT-JQJ.STANFORD.EDU!jqj
From: jqj@RT-JQJ.STANFORD.EDU (JQ Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Comment on RFC1124 (?)
Message-ID: <8909281348.AA03122@rt-jqj>
Date: 28 Sep 89 13:48:31 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 21

A printer language such as Postscript isn't really ideal for the "canonical"
versions of RFCs, though it does allow arbitrary graphics.  It suffers from
not allowing other forms of access, particularly online display on character
only terminals and use with typical character-only text processing tools
like grep.  It doesn't generalize well to hypertext either.

If standards were a bit further advanced, the ideal choice for RFCs would
be a standard markup language (GML? RTF? InterScript? WordPerfect internal
format? troff input?).  Then we could generate whatever display format we 
wanted for it.  They aren't to that point yet, I'm afraid.

What are the NSF Expres project's solutions?  If NSF is willing to accept
something as a grant proposal format, then I'd be willing to accept it for
an RFC.

JQ Johnson                              voice: 415-723-3078
Manager, Special Projects               Internet: jqj@jessica.stanford.edu
Networking and Communications Systems
Pine Hall Rm 125-A 
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4122