Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-asid-mime-direct-02.txt

[Harald.T.Alvestrand@xxxxxxxxxx]

Alec,

I think datatypes need to be part of the attribute definition, not of
the attribute value.

How would I interpret sensibly

CN;datatype=currency: NOK
CN;datatype=url: http://somewhere.in.cn/~zhu/myname.gif

when I want to put the CN into a mailing list?

The grouping needs more thought - your example of a meeting with
attendees is one example of use of this. But I think the overhead
compared to a bunch of separate MIME objects is actually quite low;
you save about 1 line per object.

Your example:

begin:  meetingdetails
Location; datatype=text:  "At the boathose"
Date; datatype=date: 11 Aug 96
Time; datatype=time: 10:30:00
begin:  meetingattendee
CN:  Frank Arthur
SN:  Jones
Status:  Required
begin:  meetingattendee
CN:  James George
SN:  Brown
Status:  Optional

becomes

--xx
app/dir;profile=meetingdetails

Location; datatype=text:  "At the boathose"
Date; datatype=date: 11 Aug 96
Time; datatype=time: 10:30:00
--xx
app/dir;profile=meetingattendee

CN:  Frank Arthur
SN:  Jones
Status: Required
--xx
app/dir;profile=meetingattendee

CN:  James George
SN:  Brown
Status:  Optional
--xx--

Not a world of difference; think about whether we want the additional
complexity in one parser, rather than having two of them.
(I left out the links; not sure we need them)

             Harald A