Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 17-Dec-91 Re: Handling external refer..
Dave Crocker(_at_)mordor(_dot_)stan (575)
1. I repeat that the issue of using the 'message' label isn't intended, by
me, to be viewed as a showstopper. However, I think it looks... well, at
least "odd" to use the term 'message' to refer to something that isn't
known to be a message, and usually won't be one.
Is it any odder for external than for partial? Or are we revisiting
both of these?
2. I am, again, missing something important, because I don't understand
why the external information (real content-type and assocated Access fields)
can not be encoded. What is the problem?
Of course it CAN be encoded. However, by making this a subtype of
"message", we get the typing information "for free" -- i.e. reusing the
mechanism and code already implemented for the rest of MIME-conformance.
Then we have only the remaining issue of how to encode the access
information, for which a number of syntactically-different and
semantically-equivalent proposals are floating around. -- Nathaniel