Excerpts from mail: 11-Jan-93 Re: printable wide characte.. Keith
Moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu (5605)
The character set support *within* richtext is not well defined -- for
example, what does it mean to have <iso10646>stuff</iso10646> within a
richtext body part that is encoded in ebcdic? [What happens if the "stuff",
in encoded form, contains valid richtext commands? (when interpreted
according to the outer character set) What happens if the "stuff", in DEcoded
form, contains valid richtext commands?].
Allowing a character set parameter to a richtext body part creates a problem
in that richtext interpreters might be expected to understand several
character sets. We don't expect a PostScript interpreter to understand
anything but ASCII -- why should we expect this of richtext?
I have to agree with this. One of the simplifications I would like to
see in the next version of richtext is the elmination of all character
set switching inside richtext. Since richtext can use a charset
parameter, you can always use a multipart with several richtext entities
to get the same effect as character set switching inside richtext, and
with less complexity.
I agree with the rest of what Keith said, too. -- Nathaniel