[meta-sig] Re: [Python-Dev] SIG: python-lang

[Ken Manheimer]

On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Michael McLay wrote:

> of the IETF RFC documents.  My only complaints with the IETF RFCs is
> the lack of forward references in obsoleted RFC, but other than that I
> find it very easy to track the important decisions made by the IETF.

With the "nesting" organizational zwiki features, major revisions could be
represented like so:

      NetworkPrototocols
              /
             /
       NFSProtocols
         /  |   \
        /   |    \
  NFS1.x  NFS2.x NFS3.x

Each of the NFSy.x pages would indicate their parent, NFSProtocols, so
anyone wondering about all the other versions would be able to go to the
encompassing page, to discover all the relevant stuff.

(I don't mean to suggest that the above organization is the right one for
network protocols, just a simple example from a possibly simplistic model
of them...)

With v2.2 changes (it's in the CVS checkout), Zope will provide access to
contents of different object versions, particularly useful for text-based
objects like wiki pages - so minor version changes to an RFC could be
captured in different versions of the wiki page for the RFC, if that would
be a suitable thing to do.  With discriminating security settings, a group
of authors can collaborate on the development of an RFC in full view of
the public, for feedback and comment.  Lotsa benefits.

> I suppose the Python RFCs could use an XML document format to add some
> structure to the Python RFCs.

The next generation of structured text processing will realize the
original intent, divorcing the internal structure from its presentation -
so we can subclass the renderer to produce whatever kind of output we
might want, including XML.  This way, RFC authors could author the
document in easy-to-write structured text and still be expressing the full
structure...

Ken
klm@digicool.com