Re: MIME multipart/* vs HTTP

I have copied this message from the http list to the mhtml list
(HMTL in email, or more exactly documents taken from the web in
email) list, and suggest that you continue to cross-post to mhtml
in this thread. They might be very interested, and have something
to say from their viewpoint.

Regards,	Martin.

On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Scott Lawrence wrote:

> 
> PH-B> OK I'll admit it. Content-Length is not actually valid MIME. It
> PH-B> was added to the HTTP spec after I discovered a problem with the
> PH-B> original POST and PUT method [...]
> 
> PH-B> [...] There was absolutely no way I was going to corrupt the
> PH-B> HTTP spec with stupid and unnecessary boundary
> PH-B> markers. Introducing probabalistic fudges when there is an
> PH-B> analytic solution is something I dislike intensely. Besides
> PH-B> searching for the boundary marker was very expensive
> PH-B> computationally, every byte had to be examnined.
> 
>   Hear hear.
> 
>   If the intent is/was that Content-Length should be used in each part
>   of a multipart/* body part rather than boundary markers, then I
>   believe that the spec needs some clarification on this point.  While
>   I expect that others may disagree, I believe that such a change
>   would be a big improvement.
> 
> PH-B> Against this the MIME argument was that you might want to gate
> PH-B> HTTP to mail.  The idea that the gateway should handle the
> PH-B> convbersion was not acceptable.
> 
>   A gateway would also have to do work to change the HTTP 8-bit data
>   to some Content-Transfer-Encoding anyway, wouldn't it?  Adding a
>   boundary marker (or the Content-Length in the other direction) in
>   the process hardly seems an extraordinary requirement.
> 
> --
> Scott Lawrence           EmWeb Embedded Server       <lawrence@agranat.com>
> Agranat Systems, Inc.        Engineering            http://www.agranat.com/
> 
> 


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Dr.sc.  Martin J. Du"rst			    ' , . p y f g c R l / =
Institut fu"r Informatik			     a o e U i D h T n S -
der Universita"t Zu"rich			      ; q j k x b m w v z
Winterthurerstrasse  190			     (the Dvorak keyboard)
CH-8057   Zu"rich-Irchel   Tel: +41 1 257 43 16
 S w i t z e r l a n d	   Fax: +41 1 363 00 35   Email: mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch
テュールスト・マーティン・ヤコブ（チューリッヒ大学情報科学科）
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Received on Wednesday, 30 April 1997 11:59:21 UTC