- From: Joel N. Weber II <devnull@gnu.org>
- Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 20:34:06 -0500 (EST)
- To: john@math.nwu.edu
- CC: mogul@pa.dec.com, ietf-http-wg@w3.org, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
Right now I suspect that most servers contain routines for decoding base64, but not encoding and most clients have routines for encoding and not decoding. If clients support data: urls, they have to be able to decode base64. The implentation of base64 is fairly simple; I've seen a 24 line implmentation of the decoder in the `awk' language. If we imagine a day when Basic no longer exists there will be no need for base64 in server or client. I doubt base64 will ever stop existing. It will probably always be present for backwards compatibility. Servers could stop supporting it (most web servers I use already don't use it, since the info on them is publicly accessible), but a client might as well keep code that supports it, in case a user ever needs it.
Received on Wednesday, 31 December 1997 20:34:26 UTC