SB> That is what I was thinking on Tuesday 6/17, but actually doing
SB> something with it and covering all the possibilities with ASCII seems
SB> noticably more complex to implement and to test, and for no apparent
SB> benefit.
I'm sure that the complexity won't be overwhelming :).
The benefit is that the protocol is human-readable. Don't discount
this too much; you are not going to quickly get vendors of network
monitoring equipment deploying versions of thier products that will
decode IPP (not until long after you're done, if history is any
guide).
The first step in debugging any distributed operation is finding out
what went over the wire so you can determine who did what (and using
the opinion of one end of the wire for this is a good way to go down
a lot of dead ends).
One other note: when developing any protocol, one always discovers
that things you thought would be easy aren't, and often the reverse
too. If these discoveries always justify reopening early and
fundamental design decisions (good or not so good), then you can end
up with a process that goes on for a long long time...
-- Scott Lawrence EmWeb Embedded Server <lawrence@agranat.com> Agranat Systems, Inc. Engineering http://www.agranat.com/