I "third" the vote for MIME encodings, I think we will we in great shape
for the future. Not only can we do complex types such as audio, video...
but we can also do complex encodings, including encryption when standards
become available. The current MIME standard explicitly forbids use of
encodings other than 7bit, 8bit, or binary with content types that
recursively include other content-type fields (multipart and message); I
think Tony's example was illegal. However, a multi-part query could be sent
which includes some encrypted content-types within a multi-part message.
Multi-part messages should also clean up requests so we don't get a lot of
gopher looking strings between the client and server. Did I just go off the
deep end and lose everyone or is the text above clear?! MIME experts please
speak up.
ka