I'd like to make a modest proposal for how to proceed from the point
where we now find ourselves, where our happy consensus seems to have
deteriorated somewhat on one point, but still exists nearly everywhere
else.
What I propose is this: Put the document "to bed" in the sense of
proceeding with the RFC, but with the understanding that the issue of
richtext has NOT been finalized to everyone's satisfaction. My
understanding from Dave and Greg is that if we keep richtext in the
Proposed Standard, and then decide to spin it off to a separate RFC
later, this will NOT necessarily reset the clock to Proposed. That is,
when we go to Draft Standard in six months, we could decide to do so
without richtext, or with richtext in a separate parallel document, or
even with richtext kept in the main document and some relatively minor
substantive revisions.
It will surprise no one, I'm sure, if I again argue for keeping richtext
in at that point. (But I'm not so closed minded, on the other hand, as
to preclude the possibility that I will be convinced not to do so by
ongoing events & discussions.) The point is, we argued over richtext
before, and we can argue over it again in the future before this becomes
a Draft Standard. Let's just let it lay for now. The experience of
six months or so of experimentation with richtext may make the situation
much clearer one way or the other. How about if we all just take a deep
breath and defer the argument until the fall? -- Nathaniel