John,
The claim that there is no such thing as a free lunch is not always true.
I think that RichText will prove to be a free lunch, though Nathaniel
might think that the amount of effort he put into it makes it anything
but free.
My view is that we have an extraordinary opportunity to do a Very Good Thing,
here, by upgrading the world's common view of minimal presentation text,
moving from pure ascii to something with format control. That wasn't
the group's primary agenda, but it seems to me likely to be a very, very
nice contribution.
The spec has been around, as part of MIME, and commented on for some
time now. THere is at least one implementation (more?) and the
kinds of concersn that are being expressed are not that It Doesn't Work,
but rather that we want to tune it, make it closer to some other spec,
or the like. I would claim that the time for such diddling is past.
My original support for something like Option 2 was on the premise that
it would not destabize the basic process.
While I think that the issues you are raising have a basic merit, I think
that the effect of pursuing them will be a disservice to RichText and,
therefore, the community, since it would cause the window of opportunity
to pass.
Dave