ietf-822
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Re: Web and Mail integration: a few key connections.

1993-11-07 18:50:36
Ned writes...

I think we also need some kind of message subtype in MIME that does things
similar to message/external-body but resolves URIs and/or URNs. I don't see
this as being something that can be just another access-type under
message/external-body because of the semantics peculiar to the HTTP way of
resolving URIs (specifically, that the content-type is selected by the 
server in response to what the client indicates it can handle).

There is a need for a URN-like thing that can be absoultely tied to a
particular format of an object.  Without such a URN there is no way to
cache/replicate objects correctly. 

This doesn't preclude HTTP (or gopher, or whatever) from doing "conversion"
from a primary format to another format on behalf of the client.

A properly designed URN/URL system would not prevent use of MIME's
message/external-body with URNs, though it might not allow conversion
on-the-fly in this case.

Keith