From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(_at_)thumper(_dot_)bellcore(_dot_)com>
To: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie(_at_)sayshell(_dot_)umd(_dot_)edu>
Excerpts from mail: 13-Dec-91 Re: NO SUBJECT "Louis A. Mamakos"@saysh (656)
Rather than going in and out of character sets with richtext
directives, why not instead use a MULTIPART, with each part being
richtext in whatever character set you'd like?
This sounds like a wonderful simplification to me. Any objections?
I have no objections to the base concept. However, I am worried
about the rules for combining richtext body parts together. I
don't recal ever seeing them written down, and I doubt that everyone
who writes a document processor will just "guess" the same rules.
For example: when can you combine adjacent body parts together?
Is there a line break between body parts? Is there a word break
implied? What do you do when there is an intervening body part
that is not richtext? Is the second body part all part of the
same "document", or is it a separate document that is "attached"
to the first?
I have no doubt that each of us, individually could decide these
issues in a manner that suits us. However, I doubt if any two of
us would reach the same decisions. And that implies that our
encodings wont interoperate. Needless to say, this strikes me
as a *bad* thing.
Neil