Re: Revising Richtext

> Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 5-Feb-92 Re: Revising Richtext
> Dave Crocker(_at_)mordor(_dot_)stan (1387)


> The
> feedback from this list has been unusually strong and consistent.  Even
> those not wanting to disturb things, now, or claiming mild
> opinion, all
> seem to support choosing Nathaniel's
> option 2.  (Would that we had this
> kind of consensus
> over ANY of MIME's other points!)

> Hence, I think
> that it is quite reasonable to explore making the change
> now, rather than later, as long as it does not affect the
> IESG/IAB 
> process.  (Believe me, there is plenty of
> precedent for this level of
> change, this late in the
> game.  I can't guarantee that it's ok, but I
> can tell
> you that I think it OUGHT to be...)

Well, this is very
interesting.   Basically, I've backed off because I think that getting this
out the door & keeping richtext in the draft is more important than getting
this one point "perfect".  But if the alternative is getting this out the
door, keeping richtext in the draft, AND getting this one point right, I'm
even happier.

So I guess the questions on the table now are these:  

1.
Is there anyone who cares to strongly argue AGAINST option #2?
(To recap, this says that lone newlines (CRLFs) in richtext are "soft", i.e.
white space, and that sequences of N newlines, where N>1, are to be
interpreted as N-1 hard newlines.)   Or, to argue AGAINST making
the change at this time, despite Dave's procedural perspective?

2.
Do any of the other richtext implementors out there have a feel for how much
this will break any existing usage?  In my case, if you pass the "new"
richtext to my old richtext interpreter, you'll see some paragraphs run
together, that's all.  Not great, but certainly endurable.  And passing the
"old" richtext to my new richtext interpreter will generally be fine because
it almost surely uses "<nl>" or "<paragraph>" and has no real reason to
have generated sequences of CRLFs in the old scheme.

Anyway, I
really don't want make an issue of this, but if a consensus
exists I guess we'd be foolish not to take advantage of it....  --
Nathaniel