Subject: RE: compact headers (was RE: [SIP] IANA SIP header registration)

From: Jonathan Rosenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 12:38:20 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Olson [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 10:45 AM
> To: Robert Sparks
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: compact headers (was RE: [SIP] IANA SIP header
> registration)
> 
> 
> Thanks for pointing this out. What is the guideline
> for when we exhaust the 26 single-letter forms?
> Do we go to two-letter forms, three-letter forms, etc.?
> What is the point of diminishing returns here?

We will end at 26. I suspect there are implementations that assume short
form is one letter. Doing more defeats the purpose.

We've had very mixed reactions on short form. There have been posters who
wanted nothing but, and even insisted on it for things like CSeq, which is
pretty short already. Others think its a waste. 

From an implementation perspective, its really a trivial amount of work
either way. Its there; its not going away (there are implementations and
there are people who send it). So, arguing about the merits of short form is
moot.

So, in an attempt to please some of the people some of the time, the
guidelines draft has this little tidbit about when to define short form.
I'll update it to indicate that the short form should always be a single
character.

-Jonathan R.
---
Jonathan D. Rosenberg                       72 Eagle Rock Ave.
Chief Scientist                             First Floor
dynamicsoft                                 East Hanover, NJ 07936
[email-masked]                     FAX:   (973) 952-5050
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~jdrosen         PHONE: (973) 952-5000
http://www.dynamicsoft.com

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