Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> schrieb/wrote:
bullfeathers. the way MIME defines it, it's a transfer encoding.
it's the means used to convert from canonical form to on-the-wire
form. putting compression anywhere else would break MIME.
It's very likely that a new CTE would break MIME, too.
Very unlikely, actually. CTE has always been extensible and has always allowed
X- tokens. The rules for handling unknown CTEs are also well defined. And such
tokens have been seen fairly wide use: X-UUENCODE, for example. To the extent
there have been problems the problems have been with the use of nonstandard and
often as not poorly defined stuff.
Another idea would be to create an Extended MIME standard (EMIME) that
may be used only within an confined environment. This would allow to add
new ``Extended'' CTEs, new headers such as Content-Encoding (from HTTP),
and an extension mechanism that allows further extensions.
I really don't think the risks are sufficient to justify this sort of thing.
Ned