From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Feb 13 01:26:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA29901 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 13 Feb 1997 01:26:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from werple.net.au (melb.werple.net.au [203.9.190.18]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id BAA29810 for ; Thu, 13 Feb 1997 01:24:38 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 12282 invoked by uid 5); 13 Feb 1997 09:24:34 -0000 MBOX-Line: From jb@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au Thu Feb 13 19:39:00 1997 Received: (from jb@localhost) by freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA00435; Thu, 13 Feb 1997 19:39:00 +1100 (EST) From: John Birrell Message-Id: <199702130839.TAA00435@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au> Subject: Re: MIME applications for FreeBSD To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 19:38:59 +1100 (EST) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199702121715.KAA00715@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "Feb 12, 97 10:15:47 am" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Terry Lambert wrote: > 1) Boundry identification > 2) Multile logical message bodies seperated by boundry identifiers > 3) Content transfer encoding for binary data > > As to what binary data is permitted to be encoded: > > 1) Any binary data the sender and the recipient can agree upon > > > Though I'd be perfectly happy to see this limited to binary data for > which public source reference implementations exist (ie: no more Word > documents unless Microsoft publically documents Word file format, no > PDF documents unless Adobe documents their "encryption" preventing > the use of non-Adobe readers, but not preventing any Adobe reader from > decoding the document, etc., etc.). But what do we do if "MIME application/msword" takes over 90 percent of email traffic (like msword has done with wp)? Imagine what this list would be like... Ugh. We are prevented from reverse engineering by the licence for msword (I guess, since other MS products have that clause). MS is unlikely to publicly document Word file format. Hmmm, seems we need a killer application (that is also available for windows) that will get everyone to jump away from msword. The sort of publicity that JAVA gets might do the trick.... now what would make that application really special? > Regards, > Terry Lambert > Regards, -- John Birrell - jb@cimlogic.com.au; jb@netbsd.org CIMlogic Pty Ltd, 119 Cecil Street, South Melbourne Vic 3205, Australia Tel +61 3 9690 6900 Fax +61 3 9690 6650 Mob +61 418 353 137