Re: Last Call: SMTP Service Extension for Content Negotiation to Proposed Standard

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker at brandenburg.com>]

At 10:14 PM 7/2/2002 -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
> > If the sender is concerned about optimizing for each recipient, they can
> > get that effect by reducing to a single RCPT-TO per DATA.
>
> if several recipients have similar capabliities, sending a separate
> copy of each message hardly seems like an optimization.

Keith, the one thing that is certain is that no specification can satisfy 
requirements that are constantly being changed.

You expressed concern about content being tailored to each recipient's 
capabilities.  This proposal supports that.  You would prefer to achieve 
that in a different way, with is certainly your right, but the current 
specification satisfies it.

Now you are expressing concern about content that is tailored to "several 
recipients" that have "similar" capabilities.  That is quite different from 
anything you have raised before.

I am sure that you can discover all sorts of boundary conditions that are 
unlikely and for which the current specification is not optimized.

And, of course, you continue to ignore minor matters of efficiency for what 
is expected to be the typical cases, namely sending a common set for all of 
the recipients and sending a single content for a single recipient.


> > So it is not as pretty as the separate command, but it permits roughly the
> > same mode of operation.
>
> overloading RCPT is simply unacceptable.

Keith, your term "overloading" suggests that RCPT-TO parameters are being 
invented here.  They aren't.

In any event technical discussions are facilitated by have a discussion 
about technical merits.  They usually are not facilitated by having 
participants pretend that they have a veto.

d/

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Dave Crocker  <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.850.1850