Re: holding connections open: a modest proposal

Chris Lilley, Computer Graphics Unit (lilley@v5.cgu.mcc.ac.uk)
Mon, 19 Sep 1994 10:15:08 GMT


> In that case, why not just use 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary'
> and require 'Content-Length:' to be accurate?

> 2. Use multipart/* and BINARY encoding, and
> send an accurate content length in the header.
> (2) requires that the server know the content length before
> it begins transmitting.

Stealing from PostScript, where the same situation applies (with the Bounding
Box) when programs are generating the file and writing as they go:

[stuff]
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
Content-Length: (atend)
[lots of stuff]
Content-Length: 12345678

Yes I know this raises other problems, it was just a suggestion. Does the
program parsing MIME have to know the length at the beginning? Is it OK to know
it later on, check against how many bytes were recieved, and detect it has got
them all?

--
Chris