[ntp:questions] Fwd: Using ntpdate -b SERVER shortly after SERVER boots

Richard B. gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Thu Feb 15 21:36:19 UTC 2007


Uwe Klein wrote:
> mills at udel.edu wrote:
> 
>> Richard,
>>
>> The rfc1305 is fourteen years old and now overtaken by the NTPv4 draft 
>> now on the project page. I would be happy to add a glossary and index, 
>> but not in Postel ASCII. My tools produce wonderful, beautiful 
>> PostScript and PDF, but not Postel ASCII.
> 
> 
> Do I find a definition of "Postel ASCII" somewhere?
> 
> The only mention i found through google were some
> notoriously known persons discussing
> how to convert pdf -> Postel ASCII
> ( and that well in the past ;-))
> 
> I don't have a problem with getting plain ascii from pdf, but
> there may be special pee to invest to achieve postel ascii?
> 
> uwe

Jonathan Postel was one of the Internet pioneers and was responsible for 
editing RFCs for publication (or something like that).  This was back in 
the 1980's and maybe early 1990's.  He insisted that RFCs be plain ASCII 
text; no PostScript, no WordPerfect/Word/Wordstar etc.  Plain ASCII text 
could be read and written by anyone.  None of the other potential 
formats was easily accessible to everyone regardless of what O/S he was 
running or the hardware platform he was running it on.

This was probably the proper call for that day and age.  The world has 
moved on.

PDF is accessible to most people and most O/Ss but there are exceptions. 
  Adobe refuses to support the Solaris X86 platform.  I don't think 
there was ever a PDF reader for VMS.

Jonathan Postel has since died and some people feel that his ASCII text 
only rule should continue in perpetuity or something.  I don't agree but 
I wasn't given a vote!




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