[Cosmo-dev] Bug 10304 and base64 encoding

[Bobby Rullo]

On Sep 10, 2007, at 11:53 AM, Brian Moseley wrote:

> On 9/10/07, Bobby Rullo <br at osafoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> Because we invented EIM+JSON.
>
> and it's documented on our wiki and available for anybody to write a
> client to use.
>

I didn't say that no one COULD write a client for EIM+JSON, just that  
none exists. And it was created for the use of the web UI.

I think other people using EIM-JSON is important, and I've already  
said that explicitly. I am just reminding you why it was created in  
the first place.

However, I do believe that departures from standards are important  
for pragmatic reasons, as long as you offer the "strict" version by  
default.

There is nothing that Base64 encoding helps from the point of view of  
the UI client, so I don't see the problem having it be optional.  
We've all talked about optimizations for the web UI that would result  
in departures from the Atom standard.

There are performance issues in the Web UI, and it is documented (by  
me, on this list) that size of stuff (code + data) coming down over  
the wire is a big factor, so being stingy with bytes makes sense.

Also, just because we don't (yet) have explicit performance goals  
doesn't mean we should never consider performance.

To recap:

Mandatory Base64 Encoding:

Advantages:
	Standards compliant clients will get base64 encoded content
Disadvantages
	Hard to debug
	Somewhat bigger downloads
	Decoding may be slow (TBD)

Optional Base64 Encoding

Advantages:
	Standards compliant clients will get base64 encoded content
Disadvantages
	...?

Bobby