--On Tuesday, July 07, 2009 14:12 -0700 Tim Bray <tb...@textuality.com> wrote:
>... >> We draw some comfort from >> the facts that it does not have to be interpreted by programs >> for display, > > I really hope you didn't mean what that sentence apparently > says. No file may be displayed without the invention of one or > more computer programs. I think that what you're saying is > that IETF legacy plain-text displays correctly in a terminal > emulator (and incorrectly in a browser). This is clearly > correct but many of us feel that correct display in a browser > is of higher utility to a greater number of potential spec > users. With the understanding that I'm not a heavy Linux or Unix user on client machines but in the hope that the community will understand the reference, let me restate the comment as follows: If I start with a plain-ASCII string with line boundaries in it if needed, I can get it plausibly (although perhaps not optimally) rendered by piping it to the user's display terminal, e.g., with cat(string) or printf(string) Those functions, in addition to being extremely simple, tend to be basic functions of operating systems or APIs to those basic functions. By contrast, sensible rendering of, e.g., HTML, requires that I recognize the material as HTML and have a sufficient HTML interpreter to distinguish between what is to be displayed and what are instructions and perhaps what to do with those instructions. That seems to me to be a significant and substantive difference. YMMD. john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
