Re: [hybi] Framing take IV

[Scott Ferguson <[e-mail]>]

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> On Aug 3, 2010, at 5:53 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>   
>> On Wed, 4 Aug 2010, Greg Wilkins wrote:
>>     
>>> I think that we have reasonable consensus on something like:
>>>
>>>  +--------------------------------------------------+
>>>  | frag(1) |unused(3) | opcode(4) |  Length(16)     |
>>>  +--------------------------------------------------+
>>>  |                      Data                        |
>>>  +--------------------------------------------------+
>>>       
>> Why would we have a fixed length field with fragmentation rather than a 
>> variable length field?
>>
>> If we can have a variable width length field, do we need to support 
>> fragmentation in the first version? I could see an argument for supporting 
>> fragmentation in the case of multiplexing, but without that it doesn't 
>> seem to actually gain us anything.
>>     
>
> I agree. I can't see any benefit to fragmentation over a variable-size length field for an initial version without multiplexing. If the variable-size length field is well-designed, then in the common case where the message size is small it will only cost one extra branch to read the length. In the rare case where the message size is large, a variable-size length is easier to deal with than reassembling fragments, and easier on the sending side too.
>   

Some of us don't have infinite memory when sending messages.

-- Scott