ms6b+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Marvin Sirbu) (08/16/90)
During the development of the ODA standards, there was some discussion of "Alternative Content Representations" which would function much as you propose -- i.e. along with a grpahic, you might send a raster which could be printed by those terminals that supported fax but not CGM. Unfortunately, it was not accepted. ODA does include a simple text string alternate for a content portion, so you can have a string that says "picture of polar bear goes here". Marvin Sirbu