Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 7-Feb-92 Re: Richtext Bill
Janssen(_at_)parc(_dot_)xerox(_dot_) (1082)
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.,
Actually, I pursued this idea for a while, but I'm not convinced you can
solve the problems associated with nesting. In particular, in the above
example, things like "*" are both begin & end markers. Nesting doesn't
work. -- NB