Internet media type text/enriched Standard RFC 1896 | Type of format Formatted text format | |
Enriched text is a formatted text format for e-mail, defined by the IETF in RFC 1896 and associated with the text/enriched MIME type. It is "intended to facilitate the wider interoperation of simple enriched text across a wide variety of hardware and software platforms". As of 2012, enriched text remained almost unknown in e-mail traffic, while HTML e-mail is widely used. Enriched text, or at least the subset of HTML that can be transformed into enriched text, is seen as superior to full HTML for use with e-mail (mainly because of security considerations).
A predecessor of this MIME type was called text/richtext in RFC 1341 and RFC 1521. Neither should be confused with Rich Text Format (MIME type text/rtf or application/rtf) which are unrelated specifications, devised by Microsoft.
A single newline in enriched text is treated as a space. Formatting commands are in the same style as SGML and HTML. They must be balanced and nested.
Enriched text is a supported format of Emacs, Mutt and Mulberry.