This may sound like heresy, but does Richtext *really* need to be SGML? I
mean, perhaps we can come up with a very basic Richtext format that looks a
lot like the way we express those concepts now in non-rich text.
For example, the use of asterisks to mark italicized expressions.
It doesn't fit so neatly for bold, since the obvious thing (all caps) would
make acronyms come out bold. Perhaps brokets, e.g. >>this is bold text<<.
This isn't to preclude rich(er) text, just to have something that is
reasonable to read without a fancy terminal *or* software to interpret it.
That is, I argue for a human-acceptable RichText format.