Excerpts from ext.ietf-822: 6-Feb-92 Re: Richtext Mark
Crispin(_at_)cac(_dot_)washing (639*)
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.
Sort of a cute idea. We could use asterisks for *emphasis* (which might
be conventionally rendered with a bold font), and underscores for
_specialized-language_ (e.g., English terms in the middle of French
text, computer or other technical terms, file names, etc.,
conventionally rendered with an italic font),
any passage where each line
began with "> " would be an "excerpt",
any passage where each line began
with a tab would be an "example"
in a fixed-width font,
and that's just about all you might need (that is to say, literature in
general has managed to convey most great ideas of the world with just
about that much typography). Easy to read, not too hard to parse, fits
with current usage and tradition.
If you really need more, RTF and TeX and troff and Postscript and ATK
and SGML are just there waiting to be used...
Bill