[hashcash] Re: new format tweak coming...

On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 10:09:00AM -0500, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> but can't extensions contain colon characters?  Something like:
> 
> 0:20040303:esj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:keyurl=http://key.troublemaker.com/public/esj:random

OK, so here's the thing:

for the extension values there will in fact be =,; which are also
reserved, and these are also common things in URLs.  So we need some
quoting or encoding system.

I tend to think human readability is an important consideration so
putting a \ in front of such chars still retains readability.  eg:

eg \: \, \; \: and \\


Perhaps another more readable alternative would be to use "s, eg:

name1="val1","val2";name2="val3"

Actually I like that better I think.  Then the only escape code
necessary is \".


Another thing one could do is make the existing resource just another
extension field, eg to="foo@xxxxxxx".

This would allow people who were interested to extend in this
direction to include from="bar@xxxxxxx", and multiple recipients
to="foo@xxxxxxx","abc@xxxxxxx", subject="hello world".

Of course we still need some minimal interoperable behavior, also and
that is one argument for keeping a separate resource string.

Adam

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