Excerpts from mail: 4-Jun-91 Re: Richmail "Terry Crowley"@diamond. (711)
Sure it's more complicated than your RICHTEXT format, but it gives you
more also, not the least of which is the advantage that there are
millions of programs out there right now that produce it.
Whoa.... let's differentiate between "programs" and "copies of
programs". I'm sure you mean the latter -- certainly there aren't
millions of separately-developed programs that implement it.
To me, however, the fact that it is more complicated is the whole issue.
I explicitly DO NOT WANT the many more things that RTF gives me for
this purpose. I base this feeling on watching the way people really use
Andrew -- we gave them lots of power, but they mostly use it for simple
things. Why not define a format for the simple things that is SO
SIMPLE that it might really become a basis for widespread interoperation
of "mildly rich" text?
I guess my current inclination is to leave it in the RFC, but change it
to an explicitly optional content-type, and then "let the market
decide". My feeling is that something like richmail is just what the
world needs, and therefore that it won't really need to be "required"
for people to implement it. But I'd like to keep the definition in this
RFC because it will get so much more exposure that way. -- Nathaniel