Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 10:02:41 -0500 (EST)
From: John C Klensin <KLENSIN(_at_)infoods(_dot_)mit(_dot_)edu>
Subject: Re: SGML, RichText, etc.
I'm seeing a real difference in the desires for what "richtext" (or
whatever we are going to call it) is expected to do for us here.
I see the same problem.
We need both "fancy text" for email, and an interchange format
for people who want to ship documents back and forth.
The former is an easy problem to solve. Even though there are problems
with the current richtext spec, it's close to meeting its defined goals.
We have a good chance now to clean it up and remove some of the ambiguities
in light of implementation experience.
It's much harder to settle on a universal document interchange format. I'm
not aware of anything off-the-shelf which is really adequate.
I suggest that we limit our discussion here to the former. If people want
to define a content-type for the latter also, more power to them, but some
other forum is probably more appropraite.
Keith