ietf-822
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Re: audio, checksums, and trojan horses

1991-11-12 20:09:17
Excerpts from direct: 11-Nov-91 Re: audio, checksums, and t.. Ned
Freed(_at_)hmcvax(_dot_)claremo (4412)

However, even
if you ignore the Trojan horse problems, the difficulty of displaying TeX (I
have almost no familiarity with troff) within a standalone interactive UA
application is enormous.

Yes, I think that objecting to TeX or troff, on the grounds that it is
underspecified, is a much better argument.  I could see an RFC on "The
Use of TeX in Formatted Internet Mail" (but then I could see an RFC on
"The Use of TeX"... :-).  Is Postscript well-enough specified (or can it
be, in a few paragraphs)?

This business of what is "easy to put into a stand-alone interactive UA"
strikes me as a red herring (not to say that it's not rightly important
to you).  We have many different environments to consider, and each will
have support for different things.  In a multi-tasking environment, it's
not clear that a stand-alone UA (that is, one that never relies on other
software to render messages) is a good design to begin with, while in a
non-multi-tasking environment, it may be the only choice.

Bill