On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 11:10:22PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> In addition, multipart/alternative, which is now mostly seen when
> text/plain and text/html are sent in the same message, started out
> long ago as a mechanism for transmitting a message translated into
> multiple languages rather than as different body part formats.
Whatever it "started out" as, by the time multipart/alternative was
standardised in RFC2046, it was definitely about increasingly rich (more
faithful to the fully-featured content) variants:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2046#section-5.1.4
and this remains the current practice.
FWIW, I don't see any conflict between the IETF standing behind its own
standards, such as MIME, and recognising that in some contexts the
higher priority is to ensure that *everyone* in a very diverse set of
situations sees the same content.
And to that end, it could well be that steering some discussions to
text/plain is fully consistent with the IETF's actual agenda of
authoring clear specifications that meet Internet community needs.
Using a particular markup as a matter of dog-fooding the MIME
specification seems rather secondary.
--
Viktor.
