ietf-822
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Re: BOF: Format-Flowed and Non-Western Charsets

2002-03-20 16:50:25

Pete Resnick <presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> writes,

Please do not deprecate format=flowed or introduce a new format option.
There will be no hope of convincing software authors to follow the
standards if the standards keep changing.

OK, then tell us what we should do. The current format=flowed 
document is broken for many charsets. It's unusable. It doesn't work. 

If format=flowed doesn't work for some charsets, then OK, it may
be necessary to introduce a new format option to deal with the more
general case.  But it should be used only in those cases where
format=flowed will do the wrong thing.

For the charsets where format=flowed already works, mailers should
continue to send messages using the existing standard so that they
can continue to be understood by both new and old software.  And
mailers that understand the new format option should continue to
understand format=flowed so they will work with both new and old
messages.

Otherwise, people who write software that sends mail will have to
choose between sending messages that can be received properly only
by new software or only by old software.  This is not a choice they
should have to make.  They should be able to continue sending what
already works for the many cases where it works well, and do something
incompatible only for those cases where it's absolutely necessary.

Eric Fischer