Re: taxonomies

At 1:24 AM -0600 2/6/04, Eric A. Hall wrote:
>  - applications
>    + human-to-human comms (presentation format, encodings, etc.)
>    + machine-to-machine application $a (eg, ~syslog writes via email)
>    + machine-to-machine application $b (eg, ~chess-by-mail)
>    + machine-to-machine application $[...] (whatever)
>    + extension $e mechanics (eg, greylist update mechanics)
>    + extension $f mechanics (eg, e-postage mechanics)
>    + extension $[...] (whatever)
>    + [...]

The question of how many sub-topics are in "applications" is fairly 
important. I can see three groups of answers:

Set A:
+ human-to-human comms
   : plain text
     = single body
     = multi-part
   : mixed parts
+ machine-to-machine applications
   : single body
   : mixed parts

Set B:
+ human-to-human comms
   : plain text that is a single body
   : mixed parts
+ machine-to-machine applications
   : mixed parts

Set C:
+ mixed parts
   : marked for human consumption
   : marked for machine consumption

Currently, I like Set C the best because it seems that something that 
can read the body can read the markings and decide what to do with it.

It is completely clear that whatever we define has to be extensible 
because we can't know what users in the future of what we define will 
want. The question is how much we define initially, and how the 
extension mechanism works.


--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium