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

[ned+ietf-822@xxxxxxxxxxx]

> On 3/20/02 at 2:35 PM -0600, Eric Fischer wrote:

> > 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.
> So one way or the other the standard is going to change. The only
> question is whether we should change the current standard (which
> would be harder to implement for some charsets) or introduce a new
> standard and deprecate the old one. Which would you like to choose?

Either change the definition of format=flowed or add a new format=foo
thing without deprecating format=flowed. I don't care which.

While I understand the ongoing cost of supporting format=flowed, I believe
the cost of deprecating format=flowed is much much greater. The previous
interations have been hugely damaging to the credibility of this effort
already. Do it again and you'll be completely marginalized, assuming you
aren't already.

				Ned