|I agree. We shouldn't *require* a composing agent. It should be
|*possible* to type it by hand.
|
|If you type it by hand, though, you have to remember that the thing at
|the receiving end is an automaton, and that you need to type it
|exactly right, otherwise you get undesired effects.
True, of course. I guess I'd rather see more effort go into making
the simple markups (emphasis, paragraphs) robust in the face of
hand-composed mail, and making it *easy* (not just possible) to type
by hand, than adding more complex markups.
For instance, although I find it a bit harder to type (and don't use
it normally), I think I would prefer *this*style* to *this style*, as
it makes it easier for an automaton to catch things like *.c. Ie., if
style-markups have to end within the same ``word'' they begin, you can
catch unterminated ones, and leave them as they are.
|There may be other people that are used to using things like Microsoft
|Word to generate faxes, and who, for some reason, would like to start
|using email too. (Fat chance? :-) For those people, it would be nice
|to have some program that automatically converts MS Word's "bold", etc
|to the text/enhanced stuff. 1/2 :-)
I think this type of thing is perhaps better handled with richtext.
It seems to me that anything using a composing agent can generate
richtext as easily as enhanced, so enhanced should be aimed at
_primarily_ hand-composed text.
I'm starting to think I may be in (or may simply be :-) ) the minority
on that point though; everyone else seems much more concerned with
presentation to people without enhanced text viewers. While I see
this as half the battle, it's still only half...