Re: *Proposed change* _data-tag values give vector length

[Michael Brundage <brundage@ipac.caltech.edu>]

On 11 Aug 1997, John D. Ramsdell wrote:
> As you all know, I prefer _data-tag less multiline tagged data
> proposal, but let me suggest an improvement for the multiline proposal
> with _data-tag.  I suggest making the tag values a non-negative
> integer which suggests, but does not specify, the number of lines that
> make up the multiline data.

This is the sort of thing that I think should not be a part of the MCP spec, 
but which individual clients should be able to do.  That is, the general 
mechanism by which data-tags work is a part of MCP, but the specific way 
your client and server code manage them is a part of your particular 
dialect or implementation of MCP, say FuzzyWuzzy.  Then FuzzyWuzzy might say 
"All data tags will look like this" while other types might specify 
other formats.

For what it's worth, Jupiter didn't do multiline values in this way at 
all; instead it "slasified" multiline values into a single (quoted) 
string, and then just put it all on a single line.  This led to some 
rather large strings, and some significant inefficiencies on both sides 
of the channel, but at least it did work...


michael
brundage@ipac.caltech.edu