From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
Subject: Re: MIME compression mechanism
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 01:47:20 -0400
New content-transfer-encodings can be defined, but must be approved in a
standards-track RFC, which in turn requires the consensus of an IETF working
group.
By contrast, *changes* to the MIME grammar for the content-transfer-encoding
(like the one you proposed in your earlier message to combine base64 and a
compression algorithm) are probably even more difficult to acheive.
I am on record as being in favor of a "gzip" content-transfer-encoding.
The next step would be for someone to write up a specification for it,
and see if it can gain working group approval.
O.K. I understand that defining new subtype for
Conetnt-Transfer-Encoding fails into grammar change. But defining new
value for it like "Base64+gzip" is not beautiful because encoding and
compression are orthogonal concepts.
So how about a new MIME field like Content-Transfer-Compression?
--Kazu