Re: MHTML/HTTP 1.1 Conflicts

I am fast losing confidence that we can ever resolve our MHTML/HTTP
interworking problems, as long as the IETF allows HTTP to claim to
only be MIME-like, while using MIME headers, but with differences from
the MIME standard?  

Without the surrounding HTTP wrapper, how are we supposed to know
which kind of MIME object we are dealing with?  Are we supposed to
sniff it to see if there is any trace of HTTP smell to it?

I raise this issue now because we need a reading on this situation
from our APP Area Directors, and perhaps from the APP Area
Directorate.

I do not see how we can ever sort things out when any IETF standard
claims to be MIME, but not quite, while it references the MIME
standard, and uses MIME standard headers that do not conform to the
MIME standard.

This is a sure recipe for a long term (like continuing forever) series
of interworking problems.

It seems to me that if any standard claims to be MIME-like, that it
should have been required to choose new names for its headers and to
strcitly conform to the MIME standard in its use of any MIME headers.

I have no idea what to do about this situation, but I am having great
difficulty trying to figure out how we are ever going to be able to
close on our MHTML standard and hope for consistent interworking with
MIME objects created for HTTP tansport, without our adopting the HTTP
MIME-like standard for our MIME standard.

Are we supposed to just give up because of some serious mistakes made
by HTTP in the distant past?

Will someone please explain how this is supposed to work?


Thanks...\Stef

Received on Sunday, 25 January 1998 00:18:38 UTC