I'm generally inclined to favor simplicity over power, ...
I'm certainly in favour of simplicity also.
Amen!
But, I think I'd still like
to have some mechanism to say "don't display this because it consists of
commands for changing viewer configuration".
I'd like to see that too. But I say we already have it.
This is why I like the
<colorentry red 255 0 0>
scheme. If a parser recognizes it, great.
If not, it still won't accidentally show-up on the user's screen.
There was a problem with an HTML document recently.
I don't remember if we discussed it here, or if I heard it
somewhere else. There was a like like
I am <b> not </b> an authority on such-and-such
and some parser failed to interpret the <b>
leaving out the word "not". Someone who *was* an authority on
whatever it was read the disclaimer as
I am an authority on such-and-such
and was miffed to say the least.
The opposite could very well happen. It is arguable that any
SGML-ish parser should ignore commands it doesn't understand,
passing the text unmodified, in which case you could say that
<colorentry> red 255 0 0 </colorentry>
*must* be result in "red 255 0 0" being
displayed as part of the message.
So ... I say, all commands should be what's inside the
angle brackets, as a general rule. (there are always exceptions)
Cheers,
Rhys.
--
Rick Troth <troth(_at_)rice(_dot_)edu>, Rice University, Information Systems