Re: format=flowed : why not use HTML?

[Evan Kirshenbaum <evan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Excerpts from bulk.interesting.lists: 20-Aug-98 Re: format=flowed : why
> not.. Chris Newman@xxxxxxxxxxx (1588*)
> 
> > In hindsight, we should have developed a markup language using
> > tricks like _italics_, *bold* and >excerpt for email, so that the
> > markup language itself would be plain text.  Even that would
> > require style-run merging, but it probably would have worked.
> > Unfortunately, it's too late to introduce something like that now.
> 
> It seems to me that something like this was actually discussed early
> on in the MIME drafting.  I don't remember why it lost out, but I do
> remember that it turned out to be a lot more complicated than it
> sounded.

If anybody is interested in that last go-round way back in '93, the
proposal that Bill Janssen and I put together (which we called
"text/simplemail") can be found at

  http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/SimpleMail/rfc.ps

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Evan Kirshenbaum                       +------------------------------------
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