Re: draft-nerenberg-imap-binary-00.txt

> Isn't converting QP and BASE64 to BINARY a form of data conversion?

No, it's a change of transport encoding. The contents of the body
part at the client matches the contents of what the sender sent
regardless of where the transport encoding is undone (i.e. at the
client vs. at the server). The decoded data is the same, so it's not
a data conversion.

If, however, the server _also_ does character set manipulations on
the way through, the decoded data at the client might not match what
the sender initially sent. _That_ I consider to be data conversion.

> > I hadn't realized that you and Steve had been discussing this, otherwise
> > I would have held off with BINARY for a bit.

> That's why I was a bit surprised to see your document!  :-)

So was Steve :-)  I apologise for starting all this confusion.

> I suggest some added little token in literal8, perhaps {###}~ instead of {###}
> to indicate its special nature.

I can live with that. If people are okay with the syntax I'll incorporate
that into the next draft. Any suggestions for a modified FETCH...BINARY
syntax while we're at it?

--lyndon