Re: Is MHTML only for e-mail?

Einar Stefferud (Stef@nma.com)
Sun, 05 Oct 1997 12:05:28 -0700 

I agree with Larry's analysis and conclusions (though so agreeing may
surprise almost everyone;-)...  Our agreeing may actually be shocking!

Larry and I have not discussed what I am going to say here, but I hope
he will find that it agrees with his statements included below.  We
did not discuss his message before he mailed it either;-)...

I think that we have been slowly converging on our positions over
time, to the point of understanding that HTTP and SMTP/RFC822 and
other different application transports must be kept separate from MIME
Content-Typing.  

Perhaps part of what we are recognizing is that there are two classes
of "TRANSPORT" protocols.  One just above the IP level that deals with
data streams and user datagrams that deal with interoperability, and
another class just below MIME that deals with transport of Application
Information Objects to provide what I like to call "interworkability".

The whole idea of MIME Content-typing is to achieve transport
independence from this application transport level, and our new
Multipart/Related specs (et al) must fully support this idea.

That "web browsing" and "mail" are very different user paradigms for
exchanging end user application information should be now be a well
established fact, and the need to be able to use both to exchange the
same information objects in different situations should also be well
established.  Neither of our two primary application transports (HTTP
and SMTP/RFC822) will ever replace the other and we should expect that
many new variations will be invented between these two extremes to add
lots more variety to the ways that we transport MIME wrapped entities.

So, MIME looks to me to be a higher level second "neck" for the
Internet "hourglass" model, with IP at one neck and MIME at the other.
Looking at things this way seems to be very helpful to me.

The main thing is to step "out of the box" and see that the Internet
Protocol Suite need not be limited to having only one "neck".

Cheers...\Stef