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.
I think the world at large *does* realize that formatted e-mail is valuable,
but the market is moving towards email+translators under the term "mail-aided
translation". Your typical PC user (who is only now getting email) doesn't
know anything about "non-formatted" text - all they've got is a word processor.
Of course they expect their formatting information to be passed along,
especially if they're sending to another user who has the same word-processor
or one of similar capabilities. Richmail is going to be going up against
this powerful market movement. You're trying to provide a simple capability,
but I think the market is going to go flying by.
Terry