ietf-822
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Re: Richtext and SGML (Was: MIME to Draft Standard)

1993-01-21 01:24:29
Steve,

The IETF is not trying to reinvent a "document interchange format" that
is suitable for serious industrial strength publishing applications;
we already have ISO to thank for SGML for that purpose.  Whatever use
that the Internet would have for RTF would not be to displace SGML.

As to cruft, well there's all kinds of "idiosyncratic" stuff hidden
in RFC 822 or even SNMP's use of ASN.1 - the IETF has no real claim
on purity of essence.

Now, that's not to say there may not be suitable industry developments
on the horizon that might not make Microsoft RTF a poor 2d choice for
a mostly ascii, mostly readable, but looks nice when you print it format.
Adobe's format (the code name was Carousel, I dunno what they call it
these days) is supposed to build upon Postscript and yield a document
that interchanges nicely between editors while still being printable.
Presumably as soon as code appears that handles that format people
will start to use it - within MIME, if that makes sense.  So
"standardizing" on Microsoft RTF might not be an ideal path, but
I can't hardly help thinking that effort spent coding up 1341-richtext
editors is just a waste of time.

Waiting for the first person who does an outbound mail gateway as
a "printer" for something like Word or Excel, just like the way I
can fax documents direct from MS Windows,

  Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, Msen Inc. 
emv(_at_)Msen(_dot_)com
        Msen Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI  48103 +1 313 998 GLOB