Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 17:33:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Chris Newman <Chris.Newman@innosoft.com>
Subject: Re: a modest proposal
In-reply-to: <19961214063702.9842.qmail@koobera.math.uic.edu>
To: "D. J. Bernstein" <djb@koobera.math.uic.edu>
Cc: drums@cs.utk.edu
Message-id: <Pine.SOL.3.95.961216172408.12425F-100000@eleanor.innosoft.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

On Sat, 14 Dec 1996, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
> ...
> Surely, therefore, the reader will agree that every byte is sacred; that
> bandwidth must not be wasted. I therefore propose a few modest changes
> in how mail messages are transferred through the Internet.
> 
> The fields "Received: ", "From: ", "Message-ID: ", "Subject: ", and
> "To: " may be abbreviated "R:", "F:", "M:", "S:", and "T:" respectively.
> A message has, on average, more than one Received field and nearly one
> of each of the other fields. Savings: over 31 bytes per message.
> ...

There were a number of discussions during the development of the IMAP
protocol about the "wasted bandwidth" problem.  Since IMAP has excellent
utility for slow links, making it better (to reduce the long-distance
charges when travelling, for example) was often discussed.  Proposals
similar to yours (except with reference to IMAP-commands/responses) were
made.  The discussions always concluded with an agreement that the
interoperability problems created by such solutions aren't worth the
bytes, especially when it was noted that insertting a
real compression layer into the transmitting protocols (SMTP, POP, IMAP)
will have far superior results.