[ncc-services-wg] Pre-PDP discussion: "All RIPE documents should be plain text"

On 03/15/2013 08:12 PM, Richard Hartmann wrote:
>    The canonical and binding format of all documents is plain text in
> UTF-8 encoding.
>    If a document can not reasonably be stored as plain text,
> PDF/A-1a[1] will be used.
>    If any document exists in both plain text and PDF/A-1a, plain text is binding.
>    Any other form is considered non-binding as soon as a plain text or
> PDF/A-1a variant exist.
>    All legacy documents which are still valid or relevant to current
> policies will be transformed within a year of this proposal becoming
> policy.

I would be very happy if this suggestion would turn into a policy, I
can agree with the way it is formulated above.

That doesn't mean I can't have some remarks which could still be up for
discussion.

   * I feel it would be even better to have a plain text version be
     mandatory and authoritative for each and every document. We could
     allow for a PDF/A appendix to documents (or even a full PDF/A
     version of said document) which really can't do without.

   * The RFC style guide [1] could be a good base. Replace ASCII with
     UTF-8, remove the paging requirement and perhaps some other bits
     and pieces we don't need and I think we could be there.
     Having very similar guidelines as other major organizations does
     seem like a big plus to me.

As a relative newcomer to all-things-RIPE, I would have expected there
to be a policy about document formats already. Either I can't find it or
I'm rightfully surprised there currently isn't one at all.

Gerry

[1] http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-style-guide/rfc-style