RE: MIME as an appointment element separator - good move...

[Alec Dun <AlecDu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ken,

I believe the amount of MIME parsing code is irrelevent (except that
people should do a good job and make it small and fast) since the
majority of the calendaring apps will have the capability to receive
meeting requests thru e-mail.  The choice on the table is either support
(a) both MIME and begin/end, or hopefully (b) just MIME.

But to answer your questions, I believe writing a MIME parser is not all
that much work (a few man-months).  There is also source code available
from various folks who have written MIME parsers, so if you're curious,
you should check out that code.

The issue of hacking begin/end on top of MIME isn't one of how long it
would take to write, but rather that of the extra code involved that
will unnecessarily consume additional memory.  Imagine if every MIME
body part needed a special parser how horrible the bloat would be.  I
wanted to try to avoid that if possible so our products can be small.

The least expensive windows CE machine has 2Mb of RAM, and 4Mb of ROM.
I don't have figures for the other ones you asked about.

Thanks,
Alec.

> ----------
> From:
> owner-ietf-calendar@imc.org[SMTP:owner-ietf-calendar@imc.org] on
> behalf of Ken Shan[SMTP:ken@digitas.org]
> Sent: 	Sunday, December 8, 1996 11:47 AM
> To: 	Paul.Rarey@Clorox.com
> Cc: 	ietf-calendar@imc.org
> Subject: 	Re: MIME as a vCalendar element separator - bad move...
> 
> 
> Paul Rarey wrote:
> 
> > Alec Dun wrote:
> 
> > > The only argument I've seen so far is a vCalendar backward
> > > compatibility argument, but I would rather pay the compatibility
> price
> > > (since there isn't really much vCalendar out there) than bloat the
> code
> > > with all this extra parsing code.  I think customers want
> everyone's
> > > code to be fast and small so they don't have to buy so much memory
> for
> > > their machines.
> 
> > It's hard to say no to a statement like that. It would seem a
> reusable
> > JAVA based MIME parser would help such that each application
> specific
> > component wouldn't have to include it's own MIME parser. 
> 
> Exactly how much code (in Java, say) is a MIME parser?  How much code
> is a hack on top of the MIME parser, for those who have it, to make it
> translate BEGIN/END markers into recursive MIME objects?
> 
> It was argued that no personal digital assistants can ignore the
> Internet today.  Excuse my ignorance on this matter, but how much
> memory does a typical Windows CE palmtop machine has?  How much memory
> would be used on a typical Windows CE palmtop in order to implement
> MIME parsing?  How much would be used to implement BEGIN/END parsing?
> How much memory does Exchange and Schedule+ occupy on a typical
> Windows CE machine?  I think some hard numbers would help greatly.
> 
> -- 
> blue | Ken; Shan, Chung-chieh; Sian7, Tiong1-kiat8;
> ken@digitas.harvard.edu.
>  ()  | Your code today becomes the mind tomorrow:  Your plan its
> means,
>  /\  | your dream its ends, your ideal its elegance.  Hack on.
>