While richtext has it's problems, it's not clear to me why it can't be
fixed (by clarifying the ambiguity, dropping the unnecessary
functionality, etc.) but instead has to be thrown out and redone from
scratch.
While I believe the miniscule complexity of <center> et al is
adequately compensated for by its benefit, the ambiguity of <center>
in richtext could have been dealt with in other ways. <center> et al
could have been declared illegal in the middle of a line or their
semantics in the middle of a line could have been clarified.
<Center>ing a single word could mean the much same thing as
<indent>ing a single word.
As I've mentioned before on this list, text/enriched is significantly
more complex than text/richtext. This is primarily caused by the
<verbatim> command, which establishes a completely different lexical
mode. The effect of <verbatim> is quite noticeable in the minimal
parser and it will similarly affect real parsers. There is no
practical benefit to compensate for the additional complexity.
--
_.John G. Myers Internet: jgm+(_at_)CMU(_dot_)EDU
LoseNet: ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up