4 ms·
Don't worry, there's an RFC for that! RFC 7990 -- RFC Format Framework: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7990 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7990 There's variou
by rpc3 7y ago
Don't worry, there's an RFC for that!
RFC 7990 -- RFC Format Framework:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7990 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7990
There's various tools to automatically format things as necessary, just like any other kind of text wrapping.
As far as the overall "philosophy" behind keeping it this way, the honest answer is that the IETF is just a particularly unlikely group to change things without a clear need, and there are likely all sorts of tools small and large that expect RFCs to follow these conventions at this point.
- groovybits 7y agoFirst line in the Abstract for that RFC: > In order to improve the readability of RFCs while supporting their archivability, the canonical format of the RFC Series will be transitioning from plain-text ASCII to XML using the xml2rfc version 3 vocabulary; Is it readable? Yeah Is it archivable? Yeah, XML is (AFAIK) one of the most closely followed standards I could think of.
- LukeShu 7y agoAs an example of this (though for a non-RFC document): Here's the "source" XML that is authored: https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.xml https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.xml That can be compiled in to this HTML: https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html Or to this RFC-like plaintext: view-source:https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.txt https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.txt Most new RFCs are authored this way.