Certainly meets my criteria for a very lightweight, easy-to-implement,
and easy-to-support and read system. And it has the obvious advantages --
not present in several richtext proposals or, possibly, even in more
SGML-like ones-- of not causing us to need to think about word processors
that emit the form. One important characteristic of email probably
has to do with being able to compose it quickly online using a minimum
of fancy tools, perhaps without any "text editing" capability at all.
It also basically standardizes (and extends slightly) a common practice
with which the Internet community has 15 or more years of experience: we
know that this level of detail is needed and will be used and that this
is a plausible way to do it.
--john