On Mon, 7 Nov 1994, I wrote:
This isn't a problem so much with text/enriched as with composition agents
which don't take care to produce readable output.
To give you an idea of what I mean, appended is a readable version in
text/enriched of my previous message with a few extra things thrown in
for effect. It wouldn't be too difficult to write a small text formatter
to produce this. Your mileage may vary on highly complex things, but
text/enriched was never intended for complex things anyway. Even this
message of mine is overdoing it a bit.
Cheers,
Rhys.
---cut-here--
<italic>On Sat, 5 Nov 1994, Steve Dorner wrote:</italic>
<excerpt>
I predict that <fixed>text/enriched</fixed>, when it comes into full use,
will be no more legible than <italic>RTF</italic> without a viewer.
Less, probably, because of the nesting rule and the way indentation
is handled.
</excerpt>
This isn't a problem so much with <fixed>text/enriched</fixed> as with
composition agents which don't take care to produce readable output.
With a small amount of formatting it can be made just as readable as
ordinary text. <italic>Andrew</italic> is (or was: I haven't seen output
from the latest versions) one of the <bold>biggest</bold> culprits in
this area.
<italic>RTF</italic> properly belongs under <fixed>application</fixed>
because it was never intended to be a readable format. It is a
wordprocessor file exchange format, not something for direct human
consumption. <fixed>Text/enriched</fixed> is intended for human
consumption, so composition agents must be more careful with their output.
Cheers,
Rhys.