ietf-822
[Top] [All Lists]

Content-Type: text/paragraph. An alternative proposal

1998-02-16 08:28:13

Ian 

While I was reading this I DID think that the same affect could be
achieved with quoted printable. Surely a decoded QP line can be folded
by the receiving MUA, where there is a hard cr/lf then the line should
be broken. I thought one of the advantages of QP with soft & hard line breaks
is that it is proof against adding/stripping of trailing white space.

   it is said that some MTAs or gateways routinely strip trailing white-
   space or even pad lines with white space. The effect of the former is
   simply to reduce the message back to a text/plain equivalent. The
   effect of the latter would easily be spotted from the pattern of
   white space before the line endings. Either effect could be finessed
   by using quoted-printable encoding (but then the messages would never
   be suitable for sending to non-MIME recipients). "Munging" of

QP encoded text MAY be sent to non MIME recipients and still be
legible, the only problem being the existance of '=' and =20' at the
end of most lines. I would not say the message 'would never be
suitable' to send to non mime recipients.

Am I wrong in thinking that one advantage of text/paragraph over
text/plain plus QP encoding, is that to non MIME MUAs the result is
better looking. After all for a MIME inteligent MUA it is just as
capable of handling the latter as the former, 

also with text/paragraph the MUA is given *explicit* permission to
fold long lines and use proportianl fonts.

I'm probably missing the point here!...

Ruth


   trailing white-space does not seem to pose a significant problem
   here.

Display considerations: 

   since pre-formatted lines may have been formatted using fixed-pitch
   fonts (especially lines from signature files), MUAs may choose to
   display preformatted lines in a fixed pitch font while displaying
   paragraphs in a proportional font.

Conclusion

I don't think that the definition of text/paragraph described in the
first draft is very useful. However, if my ideas on line-break encoding
are acceptable, I believe that text/paragraph would be more useful to
modern MUAs than text/plain and more widely usable than text/html. There
seem to be no down-sides compared to text/plain and the up-side is that
email messages and UseNet articles could be displayed in modern
proportional fonts while preserving the layout of quoted material,
signatures and even embedded tables.


New functionality, fully backwards-compatible, with no down-sides - what
have I missed? :-)

-- 
Ian Bell                                           T U R N P I K E  Ltd

-- 
================================================
Ruth Moulton            ruth(_at_)muswell(_dot_)demon(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk
Consultant              

65 Tetherdown, 
London N.10 1NH, UK     Tel:+44 181 883 5823

--