[NNTP] Re: MODE READER

Clive D.W. Feather clive at demon.net
Tue Nov 9 01:20:03 PST 2004


Mark Crispin said:
>>> There are two fundamental objections to that. First is that you're
>>> assigning semantics to fields which in the deployed specification are
>>> explicitly designated as containing arbitrary non-semantic text.
>> Right: even if it's unlikely in practice, that is not a foundation to build
>> a standard on.
> Why?  MIME did it.  IMAP did it.

I don't know about IMAP, but your MIME example isn't relevant - the MIME
delimiter field was *not* replacing arbitrary non-semantic text, since
delimited objects were a new feature. Rather, you made it a requirement
that the delimiter not appear in the delimited text, which *can* be done
(even if you have to scan the complete object before choosing the
delimiter).

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
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Thus plc            |                            |



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