Re: compressed content-transfer-encoding?

On Thu, 29 Jul 1999 10:28:37 EDT, Keith Moore said:
> > We already have a standard for sending compressed data in e-mail.
> > We have an IANA registered content-type application/zip.
> application/zip is not a standard.
Not only is it not a standard, but it loses in the translation.

Let's say I start with a Microsoft Word application.  Currently, I
can attach that as an application/msword, and at the remote end, the MUA
will be able to intuit proper handling of the *actual file* from that.

An application/zip loses that.  It basically renders any object
as unidentifiable as an application/octet-stream.

There's also a security issue, in that I can be confident that a MIME
bodypart that is an application/msword is *one* file, the name of which
I can either predict and check, or control.

It's a lot harder to make *real* sure that you're not unzipping things
you didn't want to.  

-- 
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Computer Systems Senior Engineer
                                Virginia Tech

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