Navigating DRY IETF Specs
I've been reading IETF specifications for a number of years now and I find them fairly pleasant to read. But I remember when I started there were a whole bunch of huh!? moments. Since then I have learned many of the conventions and developed a few tricks that make the process easier. I was just reminded of one of those huh!? moments and figured I would share my solution.
How not to write spec documents
A few of us keep complaining about the way the HTML5 specification is written. The argument we are given is that the HTML5 is written in a more prescriptive form to reduce the ambiguity that exists in the more traditional “declarative” style RFC documents. I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading specs over the last few years and although they were tough to get going with I feel pretty comfortable now.