2 ms·

Except that's not really what it is. RFCs predate the web, and were originally written in this format, and with existing standards you don't want to unnecessari

Except that's not really what it is. RFCs predate the web, and were originally written in this format, and with existing standards you don't want to unnecessarily change anything, because you never know whether you maybe change the meaning somewhere as a side effect, and you also want to have consistency between standards from the same standards body, so the format was kept, and also, a plain text format was long seen as having the big advantage that it is not easily corrupted by bad rendering software, so there was just some HTML markup added after the fact to help with navigation and such, much while otherwise preserving the presentation. However, the IETF is moving to markup as the authoritative source, so the pseudo plain text version might be losing relevance.

0xffff2 9y ago
I see what you're saying, but I disagree that it's a substantial rebuttal to my comment. For any IETF document that wasn't originally drafted on a typewriter, this style is absolutely skeumorphic. I don't necessarily mind it as a default, but I really wish the pure plain-text document ommited the headers and footers.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Nah, it's not really skeuomorphic because it doesn't really imitate, at least until recently. The authoritative format was plain text, and that was intended to be printable (originally probably on what were in effect computer-driven typewriters), and if you want to have printable plain text, you kindof have to have headers and footers on every "page" (and page break characters between pages in order to accomodate different paper sizes, which are actually there if you look closely at the plain text version). The HTML version of those RFCs does not so much imitate the format as it is a rendering that is supposed to reproduce the authoritative document as true to the original as possible, so as to not risk any unintended changes in meaning, while adding some of the benefits of having hypertext.

0xffff2 9y ago

I see what you're saying, but I disagree that it's a substantial rebuttal to my comment. For any IETF document that wasn't originally drafted on a typewriter, this style is absolutely skeumorphic. I don't necessarily mind it as a default, but I really wish the pure plain-text document ommited the headers and footers.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Nah, it's not really skeuomorphic because it doesn't really imitate, at least until recently. The authoritative format was plain text, and that was intended to be printable (originally probably on what were in effect computer-driven typewriters), and if you want to have printable plain text, you kindof have to have headers and footers on every "page" (and page break characters between pages in order to accomodate different paper sizes, which are actually there if you look closely at the plain text version). The HTML version of those RFCs does not so much imitate the format as it is a rendering that is supposed to reproduce the authoritative document as true to the original as possible, so as to not risk any unintended changes in meaning, while adding some of the benefits of having hypertext.