Re: Last Call: 'The APPLICATION/MBOX Media-Type' to Proposed Standard

On 8/10/2004 10:59 PM, Philip Guenther wrote:

> If there are no defined semantics for the content of an application/mbox
> part, how does the type differ from application/octect-stream?

It provides an identifier for the content, so that transfer agents can
perform specific tasks against the data (such as importing or searching a
remote mailstore, or handing the data to an agent that knows what to do
with it). The agent still needs to deal with content-specific issues like
determining the EOL markers, applying default domains to relative
addresses, and so forth. That's a pretty common separation of powers;
application/postscript doesn't relieve the system from needing a
postscript interpreter, and we leave things like ~version tags for the
content agent to worry about instead of the transfer agent.

> [regarding creating a spec for a mailbox file format]
> 
>>I'd like to see one, and I'd like to see whatever *NIX consortium is
>>responsible for such things get together and define one.
> 
> At that point, would application/mbox be updated to refer to said spec,
> rendering non-compliant some chunk of the previous uses, or would a new
> content-type be specified?

Given that the current proposal specifies minimal formatting (essentially
being limited to the likely presence of some kind of From_ line), I'd
think that a reasonably authoritative spec could be referenced in an
update to this proposal. It would depend in large part on the depth and
comprehensiveness of the specification, I'd imagine.

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/

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