On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, jfcm wrote:
[legal- and quantum physics-related stuff snipped]
But the point again is : you do not know what a mail is until you
have completely stored it. Let say the signature is at the end. Only
then you fully know what you want to do with the header.
The above "you do not know" assertion is false for some kinds of
e-mail transformations (e.g., detecting a known spam by looking at
Subject lines or headers) and true for some kinds of HTTP
transformations (e.g., detecting a virus by examining sensitive octets
at the end of an HTTP entity).
Overall, there is nothing special about SMTP here, IMO: some OPES
adaptations require the whole message, some do not. Sometimes OPES
processing overheads delay the entire message; sometimes they delay a
portion of the message.
Why is SMTP special at this level of thinking?
Alex.