Re: XML e-mail (was: RE: security problem in emailing HTML)

On Thu, Dec 09, 1999 at 11:28:17PM +0200, Stephanos Piperoglou wrote:
> I think the main problem with HTML mail is that HTML doesn't really work
> with e-mail. Most e-mail messages have need for three kinds of elements:
> Paragraphs, a "Quote" enclosure and a Signature. Inline elements like
> emphasis or hyperlinks would be nice. When was the last time you saw someone
> use the semantic equivalent of an H1 element in e-mail?
> 
> Maybe a nice, simple, clean XML DTD for e-mail would be nice. Just a few
> elements: Paragraph, List (Ordered/Unordered) something like <QUOTE
> FROM="Bart Szyszka" WHEN="1999-09-12T14:55:42Z-0500"></QUOTE> (I hope I got
> the ISO date right, I'm doing it from memory :-)) to denote quoted text in
> replies, a hyperlink anchor (also able to use fragment identifiers to link
> to attachments in the message? Maybe a different syntax?). And you could
> always use the HTML namespace if you wanted to add something like a table...
> 
> This would really be nice, actually. Hey... I think I'll write one up...
> (I'll be back).

Something related to this was submitted to W3C in January 1998:

    HTML Threading 
        Microsoft Corporation, Lotus Development Corporation, and
        Qualcomm Corporation, 05 January 1998
        http://www.w3.org/Submission/1998/02/

    see also: the W3C Staff Comment:
        http://www.w3.org/Submission/1998/02/Comment

    and the Submission itself:
        HTML Threading: Conventions for use of HTML in email
        http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-HTMLThreading-0105

To refer to different attachments within a message, you probably
want to use the cid: URI scheme (RFC 2111):

    Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource Locators
    http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/rfc2111.txt

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny       <gerald@w3.org>  +1 617 253 2920
System Administrator   http://www.w3.org/People/Gerald/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)      http://www.w3.org/

Received on Thursday, 16 December 1999 06:30:26 UTC