On Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:43:21 CDT Chris Barnes <[log in to unmask]> said: >As you can see from my assumption above (since proven incorrect), I had >assumed that the & was based on the old IBM Script language. But it is! And just what *exactly* do you think HTML is based on? What do you think people used at CERN for text processing when the WWW was designed? >But the rest of the formatting apparently *is* based on the old >IBM script (ie. the ".fo off, .eb"). Do we really need the >*formatting* stuff? I don't think so. How are you going to conditionally include text without .BB/.EB? How can you make the message fit within a certain number of columns in the face of substitution of unknown length unless you do text flow? How are you going to be able to put a table where you don't want text formatting unless you have a way to do this? To make a long story short, if it isn't needed then why does HTML support it and have it turned on by default, just like LISTSERV? Eric