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

1993-01-22 16:55:31
Independent of whether the IETF goes off an invents its own spec for
how to do fancy marked up text, I would very much like to see a
Content-type: registered for the Microsoft "RTF" format.  There are
after all hundreds of programs supported by dozens of vendors all over
the planet that know how to manipulate this format, and it would be a
shame not to have some acknowlegement that they exist and might be
useful tools to incorporate into a multimedia mail environment.

Absolutely! Go for it!

Seriously, if you would like to see it happen, go ahead and start up a group to
write the necessary RFC to do it. MicroSoft folks should be involved if at all
possible (my conversations with Microsoft have not indicated any significant
willingness on their part to acknowledge and deal with MIME issues, but your
mileage may vary) but there's nothing to say you cannot instigate such activity
yourself.

MIME is an open standard -- you can register whatever subtypes you like. The
rules are pretty reasonable, and I hope the necessary references exist to
define RTF adequately. If they don't then that's commentary enough on the state
of RTF as an interoperable document format.

                                Ned