Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 11-Jun-91 Re: I vote NO to Richmail
Neil Katin(_at_)eng(_dot_)sun(_dot_)com (1440)
An extremely simple syntax is a virtue in the *first* release. However,
as time ticks on, and assuming richmail succeeds, people will start wanting
to enhance it. Richmail, as such, does not have a very easy way to
extend itself. It is designed around a very simple design target. Indeed,
this is its greatest virtue.
However, as richmail grows it will start resembling other text encoding
standards. And then we might regret not "paying the price" at the start
by using some other, externally defined and already existing standard.
I guess I'd be leading the fight to PREVENT this from happening. I see
richmail as rich text for poor people. My position would be that
enlarging richmail in this manner would be a mistake -- there should
always be a very simple format, and if people come to believe
collectively that they need more, they should standardize on something
more powerful like ODA.
Indeed, this is more or less what I *expect* to happen. I believe that
richmail could be the "foot in the door" that makes the world at large
finally recognize that formatted email is valuable. As people push up
against its limitations, there will be increased incentive to finally
standardize on some other more complex format. You might even call
richmail a "migration path" to something more powerful. I think it is
more likely to actually happen via this two-step process, however, than
by leaping straight to the "ultimate" format. The world today doesn't
realize that rich text mail is valuable, and is therefore unlikely to
pay a high price to get it. Once it pays the much lower price of
getting richmail, however, I think it will be more receptive to the cost
of getting a full-fledged document formatting language like ODA.