ietf-822
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Re: Richmail

1991-06-05 07:56:00
My only concern with Microsoft RTF is the simplicity issue.  Does anyone
have a clear definition they can post, so that we can jointly evaluate
its suitability? 

A few years ago we evaluated the use of RTF as one of the multi-media
document formats we would use in our experiments in format translation. 
My information may be slightly out of date since I haven't taken a good
look at RTF for two years (although I haven't seen anything that makes
leads me to believe it's wrong).  If someone has information to
contradict what I'm going to say, please correct me.

The primary problem we found with RTF is that there is NO clear, unique
definition of the format.  This manifests itself in two ways.  First,
the only definition we culd ever get our hands on (we got it from the
Microsoft RTF product manager) was more like an internal memo, was very
imprecise & was full of ambiguities & inconsistencies.

That was bad enough, but there was a worse problem.  The problem is that
there was no defined subset of RTF consistently used by implementations
-- implementations pick & choose the parts of RTF they support as they
see fit.  The NeXT editor that used RTF (I forget its name) used a
different subset of RTF than the Microsoft Word editors. In fact, as I
recall, the various Microsoft editors were not even consistent.  We got
this information directly from the people at NeXT & Microsoft.  Even
worse, at the time, no one had bothered to write down the subset they
were using.

This was a crippling problem for us & has to be for you, too (unless
things have changed).

My understanding -- all third-hand, mind you -- is
that it is FAR more complex than "richmail", and hence far less likely
to be widely adopted.

Well, RTF certainly contains a bunch of things you don't care about for
"richmail" use.  It contains representations of bit maps (pixmaps,
too?).  In addition, it hs a fairly rich style sheet system that allows
the grouping & naming of style changes.  This is certainly not something
you want to have to implement just to display multi-font, structured
text.  Finally, RTF has special support for page headers, footers, etc.

Now, you could obviously (maybe not so obviously) throw this extra stuff
away.  But, then what's the advantage of using RTF?  You would be
unlikely to be able to import any external RTF documents since they're
bound to be using the style sheet stuff (especially if they come from an
electronic editor).  The only advantage I can see is that an
implementation might be able to accept a richmail message (if you get
the subset right).

Moreover, the mere fact that it comes from
Microsoft will make it harder for some people to embrace it -- there is
a certain appeal in a simple, non-vendor-originated format!

No comment.

JR

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