ietf-822
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Re: HTML in MIME mail

1994-11-18 16:58:47
Steve Dorner wrote:
Maybe we shouldn't draw the line.  Maybe we should define *both*
application/foo and text/foo.

The application one would be for any arbitrary foo file, the text one would
be for "well-behaved" foo files.  "Well behaved" would mean readable
without a viewer, and perhaps also the eschewing of difficult-to-implement
or difficult-to-transport constructs.  (One could even imagine [shudder]
text/postscript.)

I think this is reasonable, actually, but I am not sure how to implement it
in a UI for the MUA -- how do you decide if this document is readable?

There are SGML documents that tag literally every word, marking part of
speech, for example.  There are also SGML documents that have only the
occasional <Head> or <p> in them.

(text/PostScript is a little harder for me to accept,)s
(since it's unusual to see PostScript that's even this readable.)s

I think that application/sgml and application/postscript are sensible,
even though many SGML documents are human-readable.  I think text/html is
probably OK, because (unlike in arbitrary SGML), you know that there's
unlikely to be a very high tag density if the goal is actually to
communicate, not simply to send an HTML file to someone.

[...]
Perhaps using an HTML subset as our "basic" rich text format makes more
sense now than it did two years ago.

I think it does.  At least, I <i>think</I> it does :-)  But then, I thought
(and said) at the time that a simplified SGML DTD would make sense.

For that matter, anyone wanting to build SGML viewing into their Mime
client is welcome to talk to us about Panorama, our recently-announced
SGML viewer that (currently) works with Mosaic.

We'd very much like to encourage the use of SGML by the Internet community in
general, wherever it makes sense, not least because of the usefulness of a
standard way of representing structured data.

If it's between application/sgml and not using sgml, it's a clear choice
for us at least.  So this is a battle we'd rather not fight.


Lee

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