ietf-822
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Re: text/enriched

1993-08-06 08:32:14
MIME is a useful standard.  So useful, in fact, that we can assume the MIME
specification (including the text/richtext specification) has had wide
distribution and multiple implementations.

From an implementor's perspective, if I implement text/richtext, then it gets
replaced with a new text/enriched that's not compatible I get the idea that
the MIME group can't make up its mind and think twice about implementing MIME.
Someone who doesn't know how bad X.400 is might even think "if this MIME
standard keeps changing, maybe I should do X.400 instead."

So I think introduction of a new text format has a serious cost, and is only
justified if there is a serious error with text/richtext.  Sure << looks
better than <lt>, but I don't think such cosmetic changes merit the cost of
change.

A "clarification" of text/richtext could do a lot of things.  Here are some
examples:

1) declare "paragraph" obsolete and clients should consider </paragraph>
equivalent to <nl><nl>.

2) declare that center/flushleft/flushright are only legal after a newline.

3) divide the richtext features into a "basic" list and an "extended
functionality list" to address people who want a simpler implementation.

4) clarify any ambiguous formatting commands.

Is there something so wrong with text/richtext that a clarification can't fix
it?  If so, I'm willing to yield on this issue.

I'm less willing to yield on the verbatim issue.  Since MIME multipart already
provides verbatim functionality, I don't see the need to complicate the
richtext format with it.

                - Chris Newman

P.S. I read Nathaniel's message with a non-MIME aware mail program.  I found
it less annoying to read than double-spaced ATK messages, although I admit
that the <lt> is ugly.  However, I suspect this attitude is a personal quirk
and that others would prefer the double-spaced text.

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