Hi WG,
Chris has proposed a XLM-like cookie format in private mail. I received
permission to quote him on this. I would appreciate any feedback from
the WG.
Chris said (Chris, please correct me if you feel I am quoting out of
context):
####
The thought just struck me about the use of cookies, languages, etc.
The
use of the special characters is what John Kelsey proposed. We're not
limited to that if you can come up with something better. I was
thinking
of something like the following at the start of the MSG:
<cookie MSGNO=123 ENCODING=USASCII /> msg.msg.msg
or
<cookie MSGNO=234 VENDOR=example vendorparam=name%nnn /> msg.msg.msg
or even
<cookie block=certblock /> certificate.block.msg
syslog-protocol would then define the IANA held cookie parameters and
vendors would be able to add their own. Experimental parameters could
be
done like "vendorparam" (above) where the "%" replaces the "=" of a real
parameter.
####
Please note: In this quote, "msg.msg.msg" is a syslog message. It is NOT
(necessarily) multiple messages (it may for fragmented messages, but
that is a separate issue).
A key point in Chris suggestion is that this is NOT actual XML. It just
looks so. But we could specify the exact sequence of parameters and
such, so that no XML parser is needed to process it. After some initial
scepticism, I have to say that I like this approach. It looks very clean
and extensible.
In this mail, I am trying to gather some feedback from the WG if we
should move into the proposed direction. If so, I will focus on some of
the details.
Questions so: Do you like this? Do you think it is useful? Should we
proceed into this direction?
Rainer
