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Re: Massive Content-Type definition ideas & Gopher

1993-06-08 09:14:14
At 11:55 AM 6/8/93 -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
In the case of this
code, the user has to extract, compile, and install it, not to mention
getting it to work with the particular perversion of X windows that his
vendor supplies.  The overhead of decompressing it is marginal by comparsion.

But this argument cuts both ways; the overhead of using a compression
program external to the mailer is also marginal by comparison.

In fact, this is probably data I don't WANT my mailer to decompress,
because it's just as easy to say:

zcat keiths_wonder_widget.tar.Z | tar xvf -

as

tar xvf - keiths_wonder_widget.tar

and the former saves me some disk space.

So I would count this as another case of a specialized data type that
(practically speaking) has its own compression.

But I don't want allow my zeal for debate make me overstate my position.  I
don't absolutely loathe the idea of a standard for compression; I just
don't see it as much of a benefit, taking all things into consideration.

I don't expect MIME compression
to be used for normal text/plain email messages.

I fervently hope you are right.

--
Steve Dorner, Qualcomm Inc.
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel IngSoc.



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