RFCs have a terrible reading experience. Especially on mobile or on a wide screen.

You're entitled to your opinion regarding RFC readability, but factually, you can't grep through a video like you can with plaintext. You also can't print out a video and highlight things or write notes in the margins (or do the equivalent with a PDF). Scrubbing back multiple times to catch a quickly spoken word or quickly dismissed graphic is the bane of my experience with such video documentation. To me, that may be a fine superficial introductory experience in some cases, but is a universally terrible one for understanding and reference.

I don't think anyone would favor a video over a RFC.

But already a RFC reader makes it a more pleasant experience than just the raw RFC you linked

https://www.rfcreader.com/#rfc5545

A couple things here:

1) that RFC reader is alright, but it still isn't good on a phone. If you view the PDF version of any RFC on ietf.org, it has a hyperlinked table of contents, so you don't need a javascript version of it like what rfcreader.com provides, and you can store that PDF offline. You can also hit the TXT version of any RFC and it's passable in Safari's Reader View, I'd say better than rfcreader.com (I also tried Reader View on rfcreader.com and it has other issues, so it's like trading one set of problems for another, but I see no clear winner, so for me the tie breaker goes to ietf.org);

2) the OP made the point that text is preferable to video–I happen to agree–and I was responding to the hyperbolic (and again, subjective) pushback regarding "ugly" text, explaining a way that it is still functionally superior to videos (which can have wildly diverse quality issues of their own);

3) I didn't link the RFC, that was someone else.

I'm not a huge fan of text-only but I definitely find the original easier to read than this website's version from a contrast perspective. I can't think why they would choose gray text on a gray background.

It would be just as possible if RFCs were written in HTML, like most web standards are. You probably wouldn't even need a reader at that point, but you could easily customize the styling with CSS (even user CSS with a browser extension) or just use the reading mode of your browser.

Now that I consider this, you're right. Semantic HTML was designed exactly for this.

Who is using video as documentation in their README? I’ve seen them as a marketing introduction or maybe a conference talk the author gave about the project but certainly nothing like a doc site in a video format

I like lightweight minimal styles as much as anyone, but I figure they could have made the PDF a good deal more presentable.

I don't see why the PDF should use the Notepad look - one can be too spartan.