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Re: binary vs. S-expressions

To: Tatu Ylonen <ylo@ssh.fi>
Subject: Re: binary vs. S-expressions
From: Bryce <bryce@digicash.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 15:17:59 +0200
Cc: spki@c2.net, rivest@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Ron Rivest), cme@cybercash.com, angelos@dsl.cis.upenn.edu
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 15 Apr 1997 07:15:37 +0300." <199704150415.HAA24809@pilari.ssh.fi>
Reply-To: bryce@digicash.com


 A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym 
 "Tatu Ylonen <ylo@ssh.fi>" typed:
>
> As I said at the SPKI working group meeting, I strongly think
> that we should use a binary-only format.

<snip>

> As Ron points out, readable formats do help a bit in debugging and
> troubleshooting.  However, the relevance of this is small after the
> initial development; from then on, reliability, robustness and
> interoperability are the major issues.


I've been told that HTTP, HTML, SMTP, RFC822, and MIME were 
successful in part because their human-readable encoding 
facilitated learning and development.  I wasn't involved with any 
of that so I can't confirm it, but it certainly sounds reasonable 
to me.


As a bonus, SPKI in a human-readable 7-bit ASCII form can be easily
_used_ with those standards.


Regards,

Zooko Journeyman

Disclaimers follow:  I am not a cypherpunk.  NOT speaking for 
DigiCash or any other person or organization.  No PGP sig follows.

References:

binary vs. S-expressions

From: Tatu Ylonen <ylo@ssh.fi>

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