[rpd] modernizing AFRINIC policy authoring tooling with markdown ?

[Loganaden Velvindron]

On Wed, 30 Sept 2026 at 11:26, Benson Muite <benson_muite at emailplus.org> wrote:
>
> Loganaden Velvindron <loganaden at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi Loganaden,
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I noticed the following when browsing the AFRINIC website:
> > https://afrinic.net/policy.html#propose
> > "Propose a Policy
> >
> > Please use the policy proposal template below to format and present
> > your proposal.
> > Send the policy proposal to pdwg at afrinic.net copied to
> > policy-submission at afrinic.net. According to the provisions of the PDP,
> > a proposal can also be posted directly to rpd at afrinic.net (the policy
> > discussion mailing list). We, however, recommend that it is shared
> > with the PDWG co-chairs first in case any structural changes to the
> > content and formatting are needed."
> >
> > I was wondering why wouldn't AFRINIC look into improving the tooling
> > for policy submission by automating & validating with a format like
> > markdown, and offering a template in markdown format and a markdown
> > validator to avoid the manual process of fixing the formatting ?
>
> Markdown is not standardized and there are many different flavors, so it
> is challenging to have a consistenst set of processing tools across
> projects.
>
I agree.

There is some guidance here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc7764/


> Would suggest using another plain text format. As an example AsciiDoc:
> https://asciidoc.org/
> has a standardization process - tooling is adequate but could be
> improved. ReStructured Text:
> https://docutils.sourceforge.io/rst.html
> does not have a standardization process, but there is good tooling
> though primarily for Python.

Thanks.

>
> One could consider other markup formats that translate well to XML and
> do not need multiple random extensions - XML has tools that allow for
> programmable conversion between multiple output document formats such as
> html and pdf which is very helpful for publishing toolchains.
>
> Some African laws are processed using a custom markup language:
> https://github.com/laws-africa/bluebell
> to produce XML output.  A simple plaintext custom markup language is
> another option.
>
>
> >
> > The IETF has this which could help to reduce workload:
> > https://authors.ietf.org/drafting-in-markdown
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Loganaden Velvindron
> >
>
> Regards,
> Benson