NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/comp/mail/mime/103

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-11 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!slc6!trier
From: [e-mail] (Stephen C. Trier)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: MIME in NEWS?
Date: 11 Jan 1993 19:39:36 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH (USA)
Lines: 26
Distribution: comp
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <235_12617_726675863_3@xenitec> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc6.ins.cwru.edu

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David S. Masterson) writes:
>Rich text is going to make it very hard for these people to read the news.  Is
>anyone considering this (ie. is rich text still readable if you don't have a
>rich text reader)?

Well, what's the problem with a dialup?  If you have a decent terminal,
your newsreader will display richtext formatted for the terminal.  There's
nothing that says you need a windowing system to use MIME and richtext.
(At least I hope there isn't, since we've been using it on MS-DOS.)

Minimum-level richtext processing can just do word wrap and strip the other
formatting codes.  Obviously, doing some sort of bold/underline/centering
is really nice, but you could read richtext, in its strip-the-codes form,
on an ADM-3A.

Of course, there's also the issue of human readability.  You can read rich-
text, even without stripping the codes.  It's not the greatest, but it's also
not illegible.  Keep in mind that most letters/articles don't use too much
fancy formatting, so there won't be too many richtext codes for your brain
to process.

--
Stephen Trier                      "We want to offer you a price that you
Network software type               just can't afford to take advantage of."
Case Western Reserve University         - Sales blurb from HSC Software
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