re: Table of contents for a MIME note?

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4 total messages Started by Mark Crispin Wed, 27 Jan 1993 10:12

#65

Author: Mark Crispin
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 10:12

13 lines
1438 bytes

IMAP2bis solves the problem by extending IMAP2 to transmit the MIME structure
of messages.  So, for remote mailboxes, you don't need to fetch the entire
text of the message just to get its MIME structure.

This was one of the things that caused a long debate in the MIME working
group, with me having to fight tooth and nail to make sure that MIME didn't do
things that would make the determination of MIME structure difficult (e.g. the
prohibition of recursive encoding is due to my insistance).

I don't think that having a separate structure index in the message itself is
a good idea, because that introduces a new failure mode in which the actual
message structure doesn't correspond to its index.  We're all better off
making sure that it continued to be easy to parse MIME quickly.

Re: Table of contents for a MIME note?

#63

Author: Ed Hall
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 04:25

8 lines
787 bytes

Nothing prevents a mail reader or other application from generating a
table of contents and keeping it with the message in some way.  On the
other hand, having the sender generate a TOC obviates the need for
embedding anything in the message itself.  This defeats much of the
purpose of MIME's structure, doesn't it?

		-Ed Hall
		edhall@rand.org

Re: Table of contents for a MIME note?

#68

Author: William Chung
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 15:29

27 lines
2203 bytes

Yes, IMAP2bis allows for transmission of the MIME structure of a message.
However, IMAP2bis only helps for retrieving messages from a remote mailbox.
What about local access to a mailbox?  IMAP2bis clients can determine MIME
structure without the entire text of a message, but what about the server?
How can an IMAP2bis server efficiently store the MIME structure of a
message so that client requests can be serviced quickly without additional
parsing or large memory requirements?

I agree that a sender should not generate and send a table of contents
with a MIME message since, yes, that is redundant information.  I am
suggesting that efficient processing of MIME messages by the *receiver*
would be facilitated by being able to store a TOC to speed up future
accesses.  Extracting MIME structure information can mean a large
performance penalty due to the potentially large size of a MIME message.
A TOC summarizes MIME structure information and makes it available
efficiently since there is no longer a need to parse the entire note.

There are many ways to implement a TOC; I'm curious and want to know
if others have implemented a TOC mechanism or if there is some TOC
standard/RFC I should look at.  If not, I guess a TOC mechanism is
something that can be considered private to a specific mail handler,
and as such, can be implemented in any way.

Thanks for the quick responses!
- William Chung.
IBM Research, T.J. Watson Research Center
whchung@watson.ibm.com

Re: Table of contents for a MIME note?

#67

Author: Jack Stewart
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 19:11

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2467 bytes

mhn (part of the mh 6.8 distribution) generates a "table of contents"
when you scan a message or folder.  In is straight forward for a mail
reader to generate such a table from the body of a MIME message.  The
following is a sample table output from mhn:

% mhn -list 9 +meta-mail
 msg part  type/subtype              size description                         
   9       multipart/alternative     8975
     1     multipart/mixed           5334
     1.1   text/richtext             2914
     1.2   message/external-body       30 The 2.4.CHANGES file                
           text/plain                    
     1.3   text/richtext               10
     1.4   message/external-body       64 The core tar file (mm2.4.tar.Z)     
           application/octet-stream      
     1.5   text/richtext               10
     1.6   message/external-body       69 The contrib tar file (contrib2.4.tar
           application/octet-stream      
     1.7   text/richtext               10
     1.8   message/external-body       65 The DOS tar file (dos2.4.tar.Z)     
           application/octet-stream      
     1.9   text/richtext               10
     1.10  message/external-body       65 The Amiga tar file (amiga2.4.tar)   
           application/octet-stream      
     1.11  text/richtext                5
     2     text/plain                3233

I am sure that other MIME mail readers are probably capable of
something similar.  Just because you don't have a table of contents in
the message body doesn't mean that you can't generate one.

---Jack

-- 
Jack Stewart                                     E-Mail: jack@CCSF.Caltech.EDU
Caltech Concurrent Supercomputing Facilities,     Phone: 818-356-2153
Mail Code # 158-79, 391 S. Holliston, 
Pasadena, CA 91125.                            #include  <std.disclaimer>

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