Re: Manifest Element??

[Michael Joya <mike.joya@xmlglobal.com>]

  In answer to Robert Fox's post regarding the Manifest element, Doug Bunting
writes, "It requires receivers to support both expressions of that semantic."
He goes on to say that "some receivers could attempt to differentiate leaving
out the Manifest element from an empty Manifest, thereby losing
interoperability with senders that use those two things interchangeably."

  The two different semantics are not in such conflict. Sure, there's a
difference between the absence of a Manifest element and an empty one. Take the
"Table of Contents" approach (as expressed in my previous email.) The MSH is
really concerned with the inner Reference elements that correspond to the
MIME payload envelopes. The Manifest, empty or absent, does not affect how many
References are available. A robust implementation should be tolerant of both
cases.

  Whether this is an ideal circumstance is open for debate. What purpose
requires a functional differentiation between an absent Manifest and an empty
one? I cannot envision one.

  On a side note, I think the "POC request for fewer optional
elements" regarded the StatusData and ApplicationHeaders elements, but that's a
separate discussion altogether.




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