On 26-feb-04, at 13:37, Bruce Lilly wrote:
And as long as we're doing this, it would be a good idea to define a
solid mailbox format that can be used to share access to messages by
different applications.
I don't think that's practical:
1. platform differences affecting file sizes, ability to control
access,
ability to lock portions of a file for update, etc., not to mention
record-oriented systems (e.g. Bitnet),
So? We're not saying "you're not allowed to use any other format than
this", just "if you want to interoperate with other implementations,
this is the format you should use for that".
differences in line endings, bit- and byte-ordering, etc. ad infinitum
This stuff should be kept in the format set by the sender.
IETF doesn't generally define storage formats, rather formats used for
network transfer.
It seems rather silly to build a store-and-forward messaging system and
then only standardize the "forward" part and not the "store" part.