- From: Nikunj R. Mehta <nikunj.mehta@oracle.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:13:05 -0700
- To: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Cc: arun@mozilla.com, Web Applications Working Group WG <public-webapps@w3.org>
On Aug 17, 2009, at 11:08 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote: > On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Arun Ranganathan<arun@mozilla.com> > wrote: >> Nikunj R. Mehta wrote: >>> >>> On Aug 5, 2009, at 6:55 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote: >>> >>>> What's the use-case for getAsBase64? >>> >>> >>> I have another use case for this. The Atom Publishing protocol per >>> RFC >>> 5023 [1] accepts inline binary data represented in base 64 >>> encoding. In >>> order to submit binary inline content in an Atom entry to an Atom >>> server, it >>> would be necessary to getAsBase64() >> >> Specifically, atom:entry can contain Base64-encoded content [2]; >> I'm not >> sure it allows *other ways* to submit inline binary content. I >> suppose one >> reason to keep the ability to get data in Base64 is for legacy >> reasons, >> since it happens to be a convenient way to get binary stuff into >> web content >> (and ultimately onto servers). The problem is that it is not as >> useful >> within webapps (at least, not as useful as binary content). Use >> cases >> submitted till now involve *submitting* binary content in Base64 to >> servers >> that can handle Base64, but not doing anything useful with Base64 >> *within* >> the web app (where I suspect the first thing someone might do is to >> convert >> it to a binary string again). >> >> I suppose one reason to keep it around is if: >> >> 1. Web app asks user to pick file >> 2. File is picked and extracted as Base64 >> 3. Atom "container" with Base64 is submitted via XHR using the Atom >> Publishing Protocol [1]. >> >> I'm willing to keep a way to get data as Base64 around for such >> cases. > > There's lots of formats used on the web, I don't think it makes sense > to add file-getters for all of them. JSON has gotten a lot of > attention lately, does this mean we should add a getter that return a > js-style escaped string? > > We have getAsBinaryString, using that you can get the raw data and > then base64 or escape encode it, or convert it to whatever format you > want. > > / Jonas An IETF working group has published standards track proposals for a format and a protocol that uses base 64 encoding. If this is not sufficient reason, then I am sorry but you have an unduly high expectation. Let the 'js-style escaped string' get a similar blessing and then they can bring it to W3C to include them in browsers. Nikunj http://o-micron.blogspot.com
Received on Tuesday, 18 August 2009 06:15:39 UTC