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- >My question is on a fairly minor point of your document, you mention that
- >a MIME document typically consists of a content and then the pointers,
- >with the hypertext links being references to the pointers.
-
- Well, this is not typical, but it's the model I'm proposing for
- hypertext. Typically MIME message bodies are either single part
- text/image/audio, or multipart. The standard multipart types
- are mixed, meaning "show these one after the other," parallel,
- meaning "show these at the same time," or alternative, meaning
- "these all represnt the same info. Take your pick."
-
- The "content and then list of pointers [or attachments]" model
- is my own proposed format for hypertext.
-
- > In Wais, it
- >is quite possible to return part of a document (by byte position), and
- >if the pointers are part of the document itself then they may not be
- >returned at the time the user chooses to try and follow a link?
- >
- I would suggest that the WAIS server interpret the byte positions
- as offsets into the content part of the hypertext. So the structure
- remains in tact. Byte offsets into a MIME multipart message
- don't mean much. Transport systems may mess with the headers and
- trailing whitespace on body lines. Line offsets may be meaningful
- inside text body parts, as long as none of the lines have to be
- split due to line length constraints.
-
- Keep in mind that this multipart structure is only necessary for
- hypertext (i.e. contains links) and hypermedia (i.e. contains
- multimedia attachments) documents.
-
- Traditional documents can be simple single part bodies. For example,
- A plain text file starting with a new-line will be interpreted as
- a body part with no headers, which defaults to the type
- "text/plain; charset=US-ASCII" ,i.e. plain old text.
-
- >My concerns are around doing these things for users on low-speed (2400 baud)
- >modems....
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