Excerpts from mail: 6-Aug-93 Re: text/enriched Chris Newman(_at_)cmu(_dot_)edu
(1849)
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.
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.
Well, this is more or less what was intended. I actually think that one
of the biggest problems is that one of the "cosmetic changes" that lots
of people wanted was to change the name, which is why it's
"text/enriched" instead of "text/richext; version=2". I think that's
an improvement because people confused richtext with RTF, but I also
think it makes the changes SEEM bigger. It may help to think of
text/enriched as being richtext version 2.
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.
Interesting question: If we take verbatim out of enriched, it becomes
MUCH closer to richtext. If it were then renamed richtext version 2
(which I actually oppose, this is hypothetical) how far would this
really differ from the "refining richtext" idea you suggest? Frankly,
I've been thinking of text/enriched as being a refinement of
text/richtext all along....