On 8/20/23 22:33, John Levine wrote:
Microsoft had their own Rich Text Format (RTF) which was completely different than text/richtext.Now that particular argument is interesting, of only historically. The one piece of the puzzle the IETF mostly did invent was something called "Rich Text". IIR (it has been years since I looked at the spec and don't have time today) it would have given you bold and italics and, if wanted, section headings. I don't remember what it would have done about proportional fonts, but the want/need for that is probably more controversial than your statement above indicates. Nor do I know whether what Microsoft and others call Rich Text today is the same thing or compatible. ...
Also, the early web browsers (many of which included mail readers) converted everything or nearly everything (probably including text/plain) into HTML internally before displaying it. HTML email needed no "conversion".That's RFC 1896. It looks a lot like a subset of HTML. It assumes proportional fonts unless you say <fixed>. There's no section headings, though you can fake it with <bigger> and <bold>. I think that what happened is that by the mid 1990s computer systems all had shared libraries, and once you have a web browser, one of those libraries is an HTML renderer. It's a lot easier to feed a text/html part into that existing library than to write a separate stripped down text/enriched renderer. Going the other way, there are HTML editors for web tools which your MUA could just borrow.
Right, and these are nice features to have. But HTML in email is a slippery slope. It's hard to draw the line to say exactly how much HTML/CSS/JS/etc. is too much to use in email. And the whole HTML/CSS/JS/etc (and bits of HTTP) environment has been an ongoing attack on users' privacy for decades.I expect this isn't a very popular viewpoint in this crowd, but if you can assume all of your readers can render HTML, you can do some nice stuff in your mail. I often get mail from clients where they have a question about what I wrote so they put the question at the top and highlight the quoted text of interest in yellow. That is about two clicks in an HTML editor.
Also, HTML/CSS/JS/etc. weren't designed for repetitive editing such as happens with multiple levels of email replies. A format designed for use in email must have simple rules (that can be reliably implemented on numerous platforms) for generating a reply from a subject message.
Keith
