more i think about the more the friendly letters MIME pop infront of my eyes.
this ill conceived (imho) proposal will only be made even more ill if
implemented as simple headers in the mail message.
it should be done in a separate MIME body part.
my thinking is:
a) body parts are much more amenable to authentication and perhaps even
encryption (hey, why rule out the concept of a 'secure' MLM?)
b) body parts are much more likely to pass unscathed through legacy-code
(and vendor-obstinate) mail gateways
gateways love to rewrite and even simply delete 'extraneous' headers
c) presentation control information and rich text stuff does not belong
in the general headers.
this proposal is nothing more than a richtext language specific
to mailing list administration functions.
d) while claiming to try an not do so, this proposal is simply BULKING UP
the headers. processing large mailboxes (folders, directories) is
not made any faster reading information that is not pertinant to
mail client 'start up' and summaries.
and no matter how 'unbulky' you start with, this stuff is bound to
be extended in the future. keep bulk in the body.
body parts can be ignored until specifically requested/required.
keep it out of the headers.
encapsulate it.
make the encapsulation the last MIME body part for friendliness to
older email client programs. (or rather, dont insist it be the first part).
- Ken Dykes, Thinkage Ltd., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada [43.40N 80.48W]
kgdykes@thinkage.on.ca postmaster@thinkage.com
harley-request@thinkage.on.ca metallica-request@thinkage.on.ca
http://www.thinkage.on.ca/~kgdykes/
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