Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 20-Jan-93 RE: Richtext and SGML (Was:..
John C Klensin(_at_)INFOODS(_dot_)M (1716*)
Another important issue, which has been raised by several people in
several different forms and contexts, is the argument that 1341-richtext
is insufficiently specified to be appropriate for standardization: that
there are two many ambiguities of interpretation. Presumably, if we
did nothing but clear up those ambiguities and create a solid
specification, it wouldn't force MIME back to another "proposed" cycle.
But that assumes that (i) we would discover that we had an appropriate
number of interoperable implementations of the tightened specification
and (ii) that we could do (and agree upon) the tightening job without an
unacceptable delay in how long it took to produce 1341-bis.
Actually, I think this is pretty close to true. Of all the voluminous
comments I've gotten about richtext, only a small number require actual
changes; most just require serious clarifications. There's at least one
thing that requires an incompatible change, however -- the newline
model. There are also several features in the richtext spec that should
simply be removed. Together this is probably enough changes to make it
hard to go to draft standard status.