Re: FAQ formatting (fwd)

Tung-chiang Yang (tcyang@netcom.com)
Thu, 30 Jan 1997 01:42:21 -0800 (PST)

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Previous message: Terry Carroll: "Re: FAQ formatting"

Recently there are a lot of discussions about FAQ formating issues in
this mailing list. I would remind you guys and gals

(1) the RFC documents "recommends" using a specific format for URL's.
For a FAQ writer, he/she can feel free to use

http://www.myfaq.com/tcyang/myfaq.html
"http://www.myfaq.com/tcyang/myfaq.html"
<http://www.myfaq.com/tcyang/myfaq.html>
<URL:http://www.myfaq.com/tcyang/myfaq.html>

If he/she does not use the last one (the one recommended by the RFC),
he/she risks that *some* ASCII-->HTML parsing programs won't be able
to parse his/her FAQ correctly.

(2) for a programmer who writes programs to do the parsing, if he/she
assumes that *all* FAQ writers sticks to the 4th style and write
programs which parses the 4th style only, he/she risks that his/her
program will not do a good job on thos using the other options.

As you can see, none of the sides can dominate the option. If many people
are using the "http://www.myfaq.com/tcyang/myfaq.html" convention, then
the programmers will be forced to parse this option, and the RFC becomes
obsolete. On the other hand, if most parsing programs parses only the
4th style, the FAQ writers will be forced to adhere to this style.

Even the Constitutions of a country can be changed or amended. Why should
we stick to the RFC if somehow we feel it is not convenient? Of course, we
also take risks by violating the RFC.

I say we choose the style we prefer and stop convincing other FAQ maintainers
the one we ourselves chose is the best.

Tung-chiang Yang tcyang@netcom.com

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