Subject: [Xml-sg-cmt] ekr hates <t indent=0>

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Jan 2021 15:22:20 -0500

Ticket 585 is about the indent="0" default that xml2rfc adds to <t> tags. It's 
clearly not needed since we have thousands of <t> tags with no indent attribute 
so the default can't change, but I can see why the code does it.

Ekr recently noticed all those indent="0" in the AUTH48 for RFC 8844 and really 
really hates them.  He really doesn't want them in his RFC.  I pointed out that 
there are already 75 RFCs with over 10,000 indent="0" but he still doesn't want 
them in his RFC.

I then pointed out that we currently have nobody maintaining xml2rfc so even if 
we agree it should go, it'll be a while before it changes.  So he said he's 
willing to make the change.  I said I'd ask the tools team.

While I have opinions about what we should do eventually, I don't have strong 
opinions either way on whether to take up his offer.  I don't even know if he's 
a good enough python programmer to do it.  Any advice?

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Jan 2021 16:10:53 -0500

> FYI - this thread is helpful, as I thought he was offering to strip 
> indent=“0” from the XML; I didn't realize he was offering to update xml2rfc. 
> I am hopeful that we will not do any manual processing of the prepped files.

I sure don't want you to do any hand editing.

As I've said a few times, while I agree with his sentiment, I don't agree with 
his fix.

R'sm
John

>> On Jan 7, 2021, at 12:29 PM, Robert Sparks <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> 
>> Talk to the AD. If I understand correctly this is an IETF stream document in 
>> C238.
>> 
>> The presence or absence of these things does not change the meaning of the 
>> standard,  and will not truly affect how/whether it can be implemented.
>> 
>> I understand (I think) the basis for his objection (making diff efforts take 
>> an extra step).
>> 
>> But I don't think he has ground to hold the document from publication based 
>> on this - it should just be published and we should move forward at best 
>> speed. The should talk him past blocking the document because of this.
>> 
>> Having EKR make this one change in the code right now isn't the right thing 
>> to do - we need to address the bigger question of whether we reverse the 
>> overall decision to populate defaults everywhere. <t> isn't special. (but 
>> "indent" might be).
>> 
>> RjS