Maybe I'm missing something here--if the documents aren't HTML, why
try to serve them as Content-Type: text/html? Plain text, it seems
to me, ought to be served as Content-Type: text/plain -- that is what
it is there for, and presumably that is why PLAINTEXT is deprecated.
RFC 1521 is a little wishy-washy on formfeeds and tabs, at least for
character set US-ASCII:
The complete US-ASCII character set is listed in [US-ASCII]. Note
that the control characters including DEL (0-31, 127) have no defined
meaning apart from the combination CRLF (ASCII values 13 and 10)
indicating a new line. Two of the characters have de facto meanings
in wide use: FF (12) often means "start subsequent text on the
beginning of a new page"; and TAB or HT (9) often (though not always)
means "move the cursor to the next available column after the current
position where the column number is a multiple of 8 (counting the
first column as column 0)."
My reading of this is that a web browser ought to handle FF and TAB in
text/plain in the traditional fashion. I don't know of any browsers
that will page text/plain on formfeeds, but that is a quality of
implementation issue that should be taken up with the browser authors,
not an HTML issue.
-- Dan Riley Internet: dsr@lns598.lns.cornell.edu Wilson Lab, Cornell University HEPNET/SPAN: lns598::dsr (44630::dsr) "Distance means nothing/To me." -Kate Bush