Robert Trifts gave me this opinion of RIP:

> Remote Imaging Protocol. In 1991, RIP was
> the first attempt to add standard graphics and low res .gif GUI
> interfaces to the BBS. RIP was important as it was designed not to be
> BBS software, but to be a means of displaying output from ANY BBS
> software that could be interpreted and graphically decoded by any
> communication software on the user's end that supported RIP.
>
> RIP, like ANSI, was designed to be independent of the BBS software
> that ran it.
>
> The reason why RIP is vitally important:  RIP was in many respects the
> forerunner to Mosaic. It was designed to work with any BBS software,
> and to be displayed by any communcation software that supported RIP.
> Like early HTML, the problem with RIP was that it took time to learn
> it and to learn how to design pages that used it.  RIP pages had to be
> designed, in many instances, using a notepad style editor, using a
> complex positional reference to where the buttons should appear, and
> used "tags" to set the font style.  It was very difficult to design
> pages using RIP and many Sysops were deterred.
>
> Not much has changed huh? :-)
>
> In fairness, much of the work on RIP was inspired by early HTML. It's
> a chicken and egg situation - but RIP is an important piece of the
> puzzle.
>
> The reason why RIP failed: RIP made too many compromises and was
> designed for EGA display resolution when the world was going VGA and
> SVGA in 92/93. RIP was decidedly DOS in its flavor, look and feel.
> This DOS approach of lowest common denominator failed to make the
> transition to a Windows world - as the users of PC's were in the midst
> of switching to Windows 3.xx in 1992/93. In short - RIP was too damn
> ugly - and too damn DOS.
>
> That said, the design of RIP and many of its key characteristics was
> the very foundation of Mosaic.