Re: Greetings and comments on MCP 2.1

[ramsdell@linus.mitre.org (John D. Ramsdell)]

Erik Ostrom <eostrom@research.att.com> writes:

> This sounds entirely in keeping with what we have; the only difference I see 
> is in whether one considers #$#* lines (and #$#END) to be messages in 
> themselves, or simply part of the mechanism for sending messages.

This odd passage seems to be another instance of the standard using
the word message for two different concepts.  I urge we adopt the
following language.  Let's define a message line to be the basic unit
of MCP communication.  Messages lines are single lines of printable
ASCII terminated by a network newline and prefixed with the string
"#$#".  Furthermore, let's define a message to be an ordered
collection of message lines consisting of a start message line, the
message lines for each multiline key-value pair declared in the start
message line, and the #$#END message line for each multiline
key-value pair declared in the start message line.

John