Hey mark!

 ml> why would you think that?

At the moment all the tools being deployed here for Fidonet messaging are text
based and squish, jam, and MSG formats interfere with these tools, which in
their defense have gotten utf-8 fidonet messaging to work as well as it does. 
It is the *BEST* thing going at the moment given the evidence provided.  Nobody
else has outdone it although a few have come close.  WeBeBashing is and was
simply the best.

 ml> they don't care one iota about the contents of the message body

WeBeBashing does care about the contents of the message body including utf-8
characters.  Text messaging is what it is all about.

 ml> they are just storage formats... nothing more...

And they should remain there.  No proper text messaging editor should need to
deal with any of that.  Having said that, I have been using a modified MSG
format to create and read fidonet messages.  Without the binary crap that makes
up the first 14 bytes of the MSG format it has worked well thus far and makes
it very easy for tacking on the crap just prior to shipping off to the
mothership.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.4.12(1)-release (x86_64-bonnell-linux-gnu)