IPP Mail Archive: Re: IPP>PRO: sorry, binary is better (?)

Re: IPP>PRO: sorry, binary is better (?)

JK Martin (jkm@underscore.com)
Fri, 20 Jun 1997 12:51:15 -0400 (EDT)

> >This stuff is really too easy and we shouldn't worry about the
> >differences between
> >ASCII and binary at this point. The code difference is trivial.
>
> That is what I was thinking on Tuesday 6/17, but actually doing
> something with it and covering all the possibilities with ASCII seems
> noticably more complex to implement and to test, and for no apparent
> benefit.

There are many of us (most of us??) who do not believe the statement
that "ASCII seems noticably more complex to implement and to test".
Furthermore, we do not believe the statement of "for no apparent
benefit".

Again I must ask: what are we doing in IPP that is fundamentally
different than other web-oriented transactions utilizing HTTP? Others
have not found a need to degenerate to binary encodings, so why should
we?

IPP is just printing. It is *not* high volume transaction processing.
Staying in a text-only domain leverages the many text-based development
tools prevalent in today's web-centric environments that span the
entire set of applicable platforms. (Read: fundamentally the same
regardless of Wintel vs. Unix)

Let's stay with text-only encodings for IPP.

...jay