On 3/12/98 at 11:41 PM -0600, Chris Newman wrote:
On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Pete Resnick wrote:
3) Create a new Content-Disposition for "display-wrap".
This has the advantage of indicating the wrapping or non-wrapping desires
of the sender, but doesn't dork with the definition of text/plain.
I find this option unacceptable. "Plain text with CRLF representing line
breaks" and "plain text with CRLF representing paragraph breaks" are
semanticly different media types. The operation of line wrapping
demonstrates this because it often damages the former and never damages
the latter. In addition, the former works fine with ascii art and tables
while the latter may not work.
I don't understand how this differs in kind from a wrap=yes parameter to
text/plain. Why is that acceptable and this not? Remember, line breaks are
perfectly acceptable (according to 2046) to be inserted for display
purposes whereever the receiver finds them useful, though for text/plain it
claims that you shouldn't need to do that (obviously PDA's being the
canonical example). How to handle display of media types is not discussed
in 2046, nor should it be (e.g., text in Braille or speech, images in color
or on paper, etc.). That's why Content-Disposition seems like an OK place
to deal with this; it describes the intended handling of the content of
this MIME body part. Like inline gives a hint of how to display it, so does
wrap.
pr
--
Pete Resnick <mailto:presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com>
QUALCOMM Incorporated
Work: (217)337-6377 or (619)651-4478 / Fax: (217)337-1980