Chris Newman <Chris(_dot_)Newman(_at_)innosoft(_dot_)com> wrote:
Sigh. I was hoping I didn't have to deal with this head-on as it's an MUA
convention and not part of the media type. How about adding the
following section:
---
4.1. Requirements for Use of text/paragraph in Internet Mail
Mail User Agents SHOULD generate text/plain instead of text/paragraph in
Internet mail.
I don't think deprecating text/paragraph is a good idea. The reason
text/plain is being abused is because it is useful to send entire
paragraphs in one line and let the receipient's MUA word wrap. Today
it is useful because of wide displays, and tomorrow it'll be useful
for narrow displays (on PDAs), as was pointed out.
If text/paragraph exists and is deployed, I think it would be a Good
Thing -- there's no need to suggest text/plain is preferred. Obviously
non-MIME-aware UAs and gateways would prefer non-abused text/plain, but
non-abused text/plain is becoming scarce as many mailers generate
"abused" text/plain.
Gateways from systems which use text/paragraph to
Internet mail SHOULD convert to text/plain and MUST NOT label
paragraph-based text as text/plain.
[...]
I think requiring paragraph-based text to be labeled as text/paragraph
is sufficient. Recommending that gateways emit text/plain is
overly restrictive. Text/paragraph has distinct advantages over
(non-abused) text/plain.
My recommendation is that text/paragraph SHOULD be generated if the MUA
or gateway wants to generate it. I don't think re-stating the
proper use of text/plain in the text/paragraph Internet Draft will
change existing use of text/plain. It certainly won't change the
reason text/plain is being abused.
-Dan Wing