Excerpts from ext.ietf-822: 24-Apr-91 Re: Comments on Draft RFC
Nathaniel Borenstein(_at_)thu (965)
Do we need to pre-define every possible combination that people will use?
Not if we define things as "building blocks". Thus, for example, we
don't need to define anything special about compression headers if we
have a compressed-message content-type, because all the other mechanisms
can then work on it recursively. Similarly for encrypted messages. It
seems to me that this is a simple and elegant solution that avoids
making the headers even more complex than they already are..
But if we take this mechanism to extremes, we really don't need
Content-Encoding at all, as we can keep on recursively applying decoding
mechanisms. I feel that "compressed" should be another
Content-Encoding, rather than part of the Content-Type.
Bill