Re: The issue of mime parsing

<[email protected]>:

> my question is: is it perhaps
> nessecary to abandon MIME for im2000? This seems to be the only
> solution to both:
>   i) allowing bandwith-saving fetches of only relevant parts of a
>   mail (which is yet more important if I'm now fetching my mail
>   from someone else's server on the other side of the globe)
>   ii) avoid the pain of too intense server-side parsing.

i think this is a good idea.  im2000 servers could have
capabilities:  if some server can MIME store HTML and PNG files, say,
but no big audio streams, it could tell the sender that either parts
of his message will be advertised or none.

this fits nicely in situations where receivers restrict their
notifications to pure latin-1 text or the like.

maybe MIME should be enhanced a bit for this to work?

of course there may be server storage systems which do not wish to do
any MIME decoding, they would have to state so in their
capabilities.  there will have to be a base standard:  no im2000
should deny some form of authenticated and encrypted mailing.

btw:  with SMIME servers will have to do MIME in "compatibility mode"
anyway, because they will have to contact key-brokers on behalf of
senders/receivers.

  clemens