Re: Web and Mail integration: a few key connections.

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Message-id: <9311080149.AA11656@thud.cs.utk.edu>
From: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
To: Ned Freed <NED@innosoft.com>
Cc: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>, iiir@merit.edu, uri@bunyip.com,
        www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch, ietf-822@dimacs.rutgers.edu, moore@cs.utk.edu
Subject: Re: Web and Mail integration: a few key connections. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 07 Nov 1993 15:14:07 PST."
             <01H51FBPA57K9BVGZP@INNOSOFT.COM> 
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1993 20:49:51 -0500
Sender: moore@cs.utk.edu

Ned writes...

> I think we also need some kind of message subtype in MIME that does things
> similar to message/external-body but resolves URIs and/or URNs. I don't see
> this as being something that can be just another access-type under
> message/external-body because of the semantics peculiar to the HTTP way of
> resolving URIs (specifically, that the content-type is selected by the 
> server in response to what the client indicates it can handle).

There is a need for a URN-like thing that can be absoultely tied to a
particular format of an object.  Without such a URN there is no way to
cache/replicate objects correctly. 

This doesn't preclude HTTP (or gopher, or whatever) from doing "conversion"
from a primary format to another format on behalf of the client.

A properly designed URN/URL system would not prevent use of MIME's
message/external-body with URNs, though it might not allow conversion
on-the-fly in this case.

Keith