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Re: Display types?



Ron Rivest <rivest@theory.lcs.mit.edu> writes:
> I agree with you both the display types are a debatable feature of
> SPKI/SDSI.  They obviously add a little bit of complexity.  On the
> other hand, they have the following benefits:
> 
> 	(1) they allow the use of names over a non-Latin alphabet
> 
> 	(2) they allow incorporation of pictures and other document
>             types

I think these advantages are both important features of SPKI/SDSI, but
as far as I can tell they can be done without the complexity of
display types, by adding an entry in the BNF definition for typed data

<printable>: <byte-string> | <mime>

<mime>: "(" "mime" <mime-type> <mime-data> ")"

or something like this.

This seems a better fit to the problem, since a MIME type would be
inappropriate to most of the strings in SPKI/SDSI constructions.
Also, it can better be extended to handle some of the subleties of
real MIME data.
-- 
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\/ o\ paul@hedonism.demon.co.uk  http://www.hedonism.demon.co.uk/paul/ \ /
/\__/ Paul Crowley            Upgrade your legacy NT machines to Linux /~\

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