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-
- >If I wish to retrieve the document, say to view it, I might want to
- >choose the available representation that is most appropriate for my
- >purpose. Imagine my dismay to retrieve a 50 megabyte postscript file
- >from an anonymous FTP archive, only to discover that it is in the
- >newly announced Postscript level 4 format, or to try to edit it only
- >to discover that it is in the (upwardly compatible but not parsable by
- >my client) version 44 of Rich Text. In each case, the appropriateness
- >of alternate sources and representations of a document would depend on
- >information that is currently only available in-band.
-
- What methodology do you propose to prevent this situation? It looks
- like a very hard problem indeed. But MIME makes a good stab at
- standardizing practices that are going on now. I think we can prevent
- further divergence in the CSCW and global hypermedia communities
- by adopting MIME now.
-
- In short: I think MIME will not completely solve the problem you
- stated, but it _will_ do more good than harm.
-
-
- >I believe that MIME was developed in the context of electronic mail,
- >but that the usage patterns in space and time of archives, database
- >services and the like require more careful attention (a) to
- >out-of-band information about format versions, so that you might know,
- >before you retrieve a representation, whether you have the capability
- >of coping with it, and (b) some restriction on those formats which
- >might otherwise be uncontrollable.
-
- The function you describe in (a) above is commonly known as the
- halting problem. No can do. Formats mentioned in (b) are called
- turing machines: postscript programs, excel macros, etc. And life
- gets only a little easier if you get rid of turing machines.
-
- If I understand you correctly, every document must be annotated
- with all of the resources it requires. For example:
-
- * TIFF image. 400x760. 16 colors (pantone #416, #450, #23, ...)
- zbar compression. 10k compressed. 160k uncompressed.
-
- * postscript document. A4 page size. Peak virtual memory usage: 2.7mb
- on a LaswerWriter IINT. Fonts: courier (4-18pt), times, New Century Schoolbook.
-
- * xwd image. 24 bit direct color image. Requires patch #18 on
- the RS/6000 X server.
-
- I think MIME starts to look like a _very_ reasonable level of
- standardization given the possible spectrum.
-
- Dan
-
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-