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RE: Comment on ESS and Privacy Marks

1998-03-27 22:22:03
Actually let me be a bit stronger on this:

If privacy marks are GOOD then they are good for everybody and need to be
treated in a global manner by ALL clients.  If they are not GOOD then they
should be "removed" from the specification.  

I have seen a number of suggestions that are along the lines of -- oh, just
define an extension which has the new privacy mark syntax.  I will make the
same objection now that I made to the original statment of this (which John
Pawling originally made).  It is not a standard way.  The extensions are BY
DEFINTION dependent on the policy of the label.  A normal client now has
three different things to worry about:

1.  What is the character set of the privacy mark, or does one exist,
2.  What is this other extensions I need to start looking for (which will
not be done by legacy clients anyway),
3.  What do I do if both the extension exists and the privacy mark exist.

This is assuming that we are going to make some type of statement along the
lines of EVERY policy now has this possible extension/qualification to it.  

THIS IS BAD NEWS for client writers.  I like things really simple.  About
the hardest thing I can handle is one question -- which character set.  I
don't want to deal with the rest of the issues as well and maybe get
non-standard answers.

jim

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