Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!simsong
From: simsong@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Simson L. Garfinkel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Rich Text and comp.sys.next
Message-ID: <4196@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 29 Nov 90 20:13:07 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 31

Hi.  I'm building a new News reader for the NeXT as part of my PhD research.
This news reader will also have the ability to post.

One of the things that I've been playing around with is the idea of posting
Rich Text to newsgroups --- in particular, to comp.sys.next.

Rich Text is a Microsoft format for embedding font information in 
regular ASCII.  If you were reading this document with Rich Text turned
on, then {\bf this would be bold}.  

It's actually a little more complicated than that, though, because \
each line of a rich text paragraph must end with an "escaped" carriage \
return, like the ones in this paragraph, so that you know they are \
really carriage returns.  Normally, the Rich Text interperter ignores \
carriage returns.

Rich text is mostly readable without computer assistance, unlike the 
compressed, tarred, and uuencoded stuff that NeXT uses for delta-mail.
Of course, if we wanted to go all the way, would could do full delta-mail
for the newsgroup, and let people put voice and other sorts of things
into their netnews messages.

One of the things that has been suggested is embedding font information
in the header, but this would be difficult, actually, and of questioanble
worth.  Another idea is to include monofont at the top of the message
and follow it with uuencoded, compressed, rich text at the end.  This would
let people with standard "rn" read the message.  My NeXT reader, of course,
would trash the monofont part and would just show the rich text, (after
first uudecoding and uncompressing it.)

What do people think?