Re: Last Call: SMTP Service Extension for Content Negotiation to Proposed Standard

At 01:41 AM 7/4/2002 -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
>   With a
>sufficiently complex (non-binary and non-orthogonal) capability
>set, I suspect the computation might even turn out to be
>NP-hard.

With enough thrust, a pig can fly, but that is not a relevant concern for 
building an airline.

The mechanism here provides a means of communicating arbitrary capabilities 
data.  It is one of multiple ways to communicate that data.

If you have a concern about the nature and interactions of the data, then 
that concern needs to be pursued separately from the communication mechanism.

It might also be worth noting how thoroughly abstract your concern is.  In 
fact it is so abstract that it does not qualify to call it unfounded.

On the average, such generic concerns fail to facilitate forward progress 
or protocol improvement.  Quite the contrary.


>A few more constraints, or some explicit guidance that a client
>that gets sufficiently confused is quite justified in just
>giving up, would go a long way here.

Or more thrust.

d/


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Dave Crocker <mailto:[email protected]>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850