Al,
the reason the MIME-version is stuck at 1.0 is that when the first update
of the MIME spec was done, and it was suggested that the version number
be bumped to 1.1, a certain large vendor with a MIME product "weeks from
market"
realized in horror that his product would not accept messages labelled
with MIME-version 1.1.
I believe this debacle was one of the reasons why HTTP/1.0 came out with
very clear descriptions of how to behave when the version number changes,
but for MIME, it was too late - we agreed that it was a constant.
The problem with version numbers is that they assume a linear path of
feature upgrades - 1.0 < 1.1 < 2.0, in some sense.
If you have the "compressed CTE extension" and the "efficient multipart
extension" (example!), and some do one and some the other, we don't have
a linear path, but a tree, and numbers aren't too useful for labelling that.
Besides, you *still* don't know what the recipient supports before you
send the message.
Harald
--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
Harald(_dot_)Alvestrand(_at_)maxware(_dot_)no