ietf-smtp
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Re: compressed content-transfer-encoding?

1999-07-30 12:35:06
At 10.28 -0400 99-07-29, Keith Moore wrote:
> 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.

It depends on the definition of a standard. If you define a
standard the way RFC 2418 defines "Internet standard" then
it is not a standard. But then neither ASCII nor UNICODE
nor HTML 4.0 are standards!

And not even HTTP is a standard, it is only a draft standard!

I would prefer that standards developed by IETF are labelled
IETF standards and not Internet standards, since the term
"Internet standard" may wrongly give the impression that
these are the only standards for the Internet.

My definition of a standard is "a common format or protocols
used by many different interworking products from different
vendors". With that definiton of "standard" certainly
application/zip is a standard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Palme <jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme