• From: "Al B. Snell" <alaric@a...>
• To: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 12:43:28 +0100 (BST)

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> > True textual formats never use length codes,

> Ahem.  Does the term "Hollerith string" mean anything to you?
>
> If not, consider the "Content-Length" header in HTTP POSTs.

Hmmm... I'd forgetten about those. Is it still a "text format" if it can't
be simply edited in Notepad (which would have to involve manually
recalculating the Content-Legnth)? :-)

> IMHO the true distinction between textual and binary formats
> is that binary formats are represented by octets, whereas
> textual formats are represented by characters, which are in
> turn represented by octets.
>
> SVG is a textual format, but GIF is a binary format, by these
> conventions.

Yes. "textual" is a particular subset of "binary". It's no longer really
about a subset of the 0..255 range either if UTF-8 and so on come into
it...

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software

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