At 3:41 PM -0400 6/26/00, Bernie Cosell wrote:
>As for the message format, we could say some things about the underlying
>machinery --- perhaps the biggest gripe I'd have is that MIME [AFAIK]
>doesn't allow parts of the message to interact.
See RFC 2557, which has been implemented in most current mail clients
that handle HTML.
>And of course, you'll then run into my biggest gripe aboue where all this
>is going: the heir apparent to the enhanced-email encoding (once we redo
>RFC822 et seq to make it _carry_ this stuff more gracefully) is HTML and
>is the most depressing part.
That's one view; another one is that it will be XML. Once we get XML
schemas (and we have been waiting too many years for them), XML could
be a great meta-format.
But, as Chuck said, the cost of switching to a new mail system, even
just for the message format, could outweigh the advantages. Don't
forget the costs of doing everything twice during the transition.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium
