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Re: yet another way to indicate related MIME body parts

1993-10-25 18:26:21
Some points for debate 

<<Hint to folks reading this:  The above line means that YOU should please
comment.  Having Keith and me conduct the debate is potentially interesting
 --
though I doubt it -- but distinctly unproductive in determining group
preference.>>

    ---- Included message:

    Actually, I'm not sure I understand the difference between having a 
    start parameter that can indicate any body part, and always having 
    "start" be the first body part (as in header-set). 

Only the most obvious distinction comes to mind.  Header-set has an
extremely small look-ahead requirement.  Since the start parameter can
be on *any* of the body parts and the length of each part is arbitrary,
look-ahead can be painful.

It's even a little bit worse than that.  The multipart/references proposal
requires the mail reader to copy each of the components of the enclosing body
parts to a file, before evaluating/presenting/processing the "start" body
part.

On the other hand, it seems like any practical implementation of header-set
would need that also, just so that the module that processes the first
component of the header set would be able to read the other components.

Keith