Rich text formatting and attachments in early email programs

[Paolo Amoroso]

From Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch:

Lotus Notes, in 1989, [...] had rich text formatting and attachments before MIME, [...]

 

Encryption was baked into Lotus Notes from the start, as part of the database. As was rich text formatting and file attachments, both things normal email wouldn’t get until MIME’s launch in ‘92.

Lafite and Laurel would have a thing or two to say on this.

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Paolo Amoroso | Blog | Mastodon

[Paul McJones]

Laurel didn’t have rich text formatting (and I’m pretty sure it didn’t have attachments). Here’s an extract from the Alto Users Handbook:

https://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Indigo/AltoSource/ALTOUSERSHANDBOOK.DM!2_/.Laurel-1.bravo.html

Composition

New form gives you a new message form in the composition region. The form contains "To", "Subject", and "cc" fields, which you should fill in as appropriate. Laurel provides a subset of Bravo’s editing commands to permit you to compose these fields and the message body. Laurel provides the Append, Delete, Insert, Replace, ESC (repeat) Undo, and secondary selection functions of Bravo, but does not handle italics, bold-face, multiple fonts, or any "looks".  For important additional editing functions, see section 3.2.  In short, the message you compose is simply an unformatted text string. However, Laurel does supply automatic line breaks as Bravo does, so you need not type CRs except to produce white space.

At present, the Laurel editor is not quite compatible with Bravo, though it may be in the future. In particular, you should be aware of the following differences. An Undo will undo the previous command. Undo always undoes the previous command exactly where it was given. To move text from one place to another use Delete followed by Insert ESC.  New form, Answer, Forward, and Get may also be undone.

In general, Laurel imposes format restrictions only on the message header. By definition, the header ends at the first blank line (i.e., two successive CRs). You should therefore be careful not to delete the blank line provided by Laurel in each of the three initial forms. The header itself consists of a sequence of fields, some of which are required to be present. When composing a message you should always fill in the "To" field and the "Subject" field; you may delete the "cc" field if it is not needed. When the message is ultimately delivered (see below), Laurel will supply your name and the date, so you need not include them explicitly.

[Paolo Amoroso]

Thanks. So rich text formatting and attachments in email were a novel feature of Interlisp-D, at least at PARC.