On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 07:41:08PM +0200, Elizabeth Mattijsen wrote:
| If you ask me, you could do easy with a simple header line like:
|
| parrot xml 1.0
| \0
|
| basically magic word ('parrot')
| followed by a space
| followed by the type
| followed by a space
| followed by version
| followed by a CRLF (not sure about this one, but could be nice)
| followed by a null byte
|
| I'm not clear if you would know beforehand how many bytes of data you
| would receive. If that is possible to know at all time, then I would
| suggest having the length as an extra part of the header.
If you are going to go this far (including content-length) may I
just suggest using a MIME envelope? This has several advantages:
- there are already readers for the format
- it allows you to specify the 'Content-Type' as, say binary/parrot
or text/yaml or text/xml
- it gives you a place to put 'Content-Length'
- it is extensible, allowing for other headers
- it allows you to include other 'binary' blobs in the same file
Best,
Clark
