[zeromq-dev] RFC 32 - Z85: requiring frames to be multiples of 4 or 5 bytes

[Marvin Renich]

* Pieter Hintjens <ph at imatix.com> [140424 08:49]:
> Hi Marvin,
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions. I've also wanted to fix some of the
> character choices in Z85. Why don't we make a V2 spec with your
> changes?
> 
> The process is: fork the RFC, make the necessary changes, send a pull
> request to the RFC repository, and post the draft to rfc.zeromq.org.
> 
> We can then fix the reference implementation (also in the git repo)
> and update libzmq.
> 
> As we're now into versioning, I'd add another thing, a 5-byte version
> header in encoded text. We can use characters that aren't legal in
> version 1.0.
> 
> -Pieter
> 
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 10:46 PM, Marvin Renich <mrvn at renich.org> wrote:
> > [I am not subscribed; please CC me in responses]

I did not see your response right away because I am not subscribed;
please CC me in responses.

I thought that because this RFC was still in the draft state that we
didn't need to worry about versioning.  I am averse to adding any
meta data to this protocol, as it is a very simple ASCII-encoding
protocol, and making it more complex would reduce its usefulness.

My change only suggests handling frames that are not a multiple of 4
bytes, is backward-compatible, and does not require versioning.  If you
would not feel comfortable changing the character set without version
meta data, than I would rather keep the current character set.  As I
said, XML and URL both have defined quoting rules, so if anyone is using
Z85 in one of those contexts they can quote and unquote as needed.

I'll make a pull request, probably next week.  It will only deal with my
proposed change, not any change to the character set.

...Marvin