- From: Ned Freed <NED@innosoft.com>
- Date: Sun, 05 Nov 1995 22:40:16 -0800 (PST)
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Cc: rsalz@osf.org, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
> Can you guys stop squabbling about history? Not when its relevant to the task at hand. There is an important point to be made here about the IETF's attitude towards having multiple conflicting standards for doing the same thing. You may not think it is important, but I do. > If there is really grounds for adding > content-digest: MD5:xxxxxx > as an alternative for > content-MD5: xxxxxxxxx > so as to allow for > content-digest: SHA:yyyyyy > and other hash algorithms, because these are needed both by HTTP and > by mail, we could get this through as an experimental RFC and make > progress here. The draft should be reviewed by both mailext and by > http-wg. > Don't you agree that this would be a Good Thing? Larry, this is exactly the point I have been trying to make, apparently with no success whatsoever. No, I do not think this is a good thing. I think it is a very bad thing. I want one scheme for both mail and HTTP and news and for whatever else comes along that uses MIME. I don't want two or three or four or five, not even one that's a standard and one or more that are experimental. Its just make-work for everyone to have to support all the variants. If Content-MD5 is busted then fine, let's move it to historical ASAP and define something new. I never liked it much anyway. But if it isn't busted then let's simply use it and be done with it. Either of these options is fine with me. Having an ever-growing list of headers and algorithms and syntaxes that perform identical functions is not. Ned
Received on Sunday, 5 November 1995 22:56:16 UTC