ietf-xml-mime
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Re: Negotiated Content Delivery: Maxmimizing Information

1999-05-09 14:16:31
At 10:22 AM 5/9/99 -0700, Ned Freed wrote:
There is also an intermediate case -- IMAP. In IMAP header information for
>a MIME message can be downloaded and examined prior to downloading the
>actual message content. But this is restricted to the labelling in header
>fields -- media type, media type parameters, and disposition information,
>in other words.

If we ever get the rescap protocol finished, however, this won't be an
issue, because the sender could have determined that the recipient couldn't
(or didn't want) the type of information they were sending by looking at
the media features of the receiver.

In the case of specific sender to specific receiver perhaps. But how about
mailing lists? Mail archives?

One of the key uses of IMAP (as opposed to POP) is to provide usable and useful
archive and bulletin board services. And like it or not, rescap will never be
able to solve the issues that arise with these sorts of things (unless it
develops an ability to predict the future, which seems rather unlikely given
current technology ;-).

And this says nothing about the liklihood of rescap support appearing any time
soon, let alone becoming widespread. I hope it does appear as soon as the
specifications are done and catches on in a big way, but I'm not sure I want
to make protocol design choices in other venues based on my hopes.

                                Ned

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