Near the end of David's message, there seemed to be an implication that
sending UA has a standard way of breaking up a single message into multiple
messages (for easier and more reliable transport), and then having the UA
on the receiving side automatically put the messages back together again.
This is an interesting topic, one well worth discussion, but is this the
proper forum and/or right time?
David's notion of
Content-Encoding might or might not be viewed as far more elegant, and
its certainly more powerful, but I'd hate to see it become the sticking
point that prevents binary mail from becoming a "standard" part of the
internet infrastructure.
With the above mentioned issue aside, it could be argued that this capability
could actually improve the use and acceptance of binary mail. As can be seen
in the archives of this list, the 7-bit text/8-bit text/8-bit binary debates
will probably not go away, at least in the short term. From where I stand
it appears that we all want 8-bit binary capability eventually, but will have
to live without it for a while. Even when 8-bit binary capability is
established, there will still be interworkability issues with the then
existing 7-bit and possibly 8-bit text SMTP implementations.
A solution that would promote a standardized way of handling binary data
at this point in time, should only help later when we are trying to design
the gateways to the 8-bit binary MTA's.
Regards,
Tim Kehres