At 09:41 PM 3/12/98 -0800, Chris Newman wrote:
"Plain text with CRLF representing line
breaks" and "plain text with CRLF representing paragraph breaks" are
semanticly different media types.
This is a simple, straightforward and I believe accurate description of the
two text "models" that are under discussion.
Text/plain is assumed to be (fully) formatted by the sender, hence the term
"lines".
It is assumed that one line from the sender will be displayed as one line.
While it is legal for a receiver to play formatting games with the text, we
have all seen how difficult (or impossible) this can often is to make pretty.
Text/paragraph says that the sender is using CRLF very differently from
text/plain and expects the receiver to perform whatever wrapping procedures
are necessary for smooth presentation.
It is the semantic distinction which makes the separate content-type
appropriate.
Further, messing with text/plain by adding a parameter scares me a bit.
Text/plain is so fundamental to MIME's deployment that I believe we should
not mess with it, even if the argument in favor of a text/plain parameter
were strong, which it isn't.
d/
p.s. The refined text that Laurence suggests looks helpful, too.
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