From: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net>
To: Mike Koss <mike@coinlab•com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Payment Protocol Proposal: Invoices/Payments/Receipts
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 22:28:13 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANEZrP3sU9-J0O9UcP7z0tDRDOwajiH+OWMnPaNL3WKnYa9F9w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAErK2ChjAm-Zf11YXuBQeTQvahOEJNGiPSZaD-CQ=OU9K6HtZA@mail.gmail.com>
> It would also be really nice to migrate to textual representations of data
> structures as opposed to binary ones. The most successful internet
> standards are based on text.
There are lots of successful binary protocols: TCP, IP, PNG, JPEG,
MP3, DNS, SSH, SSL, the Bitcoin protocol itself. What's more some
other protocols that are text based have suffered serious problems due
to that choice. Witness the absurd design of SMTP that means you can't
start a paragraph with the word From because that's a new-message
marker! Or the fact that file attachments grow by 33% when you send
them. Or the various exploits that can exist in web servers thanks to
header splitting attacks.
Trying to represent something binary as text doesn't make any sense.
If you look at these data structures they consist of keys, signatures,
hashes, certificates and other fundamentally binary things. You'd just
end up base64 encoding everything anyway, at which point all you've
done is design an inefficient binary protocol that masquerades as
text. The disadvantages of both with the advantages of neither.
Protocol buffers have a text form that you can print to and parse
from, if you so wish, though I only normally see people use that
support for debug prints and sometimes because they want to load
hand-written config files directly into protobuf generated objects.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-12-03 21:28 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 87+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-11-26 22:37 Gavin Andresen
2012-11-26 23:02 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-26 23:13 ` Luke-Jr
2012-11-26 23:16 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-26 23:19 ` Luke-Jr
2012-11-26 23:27 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-26 23:32 ` Gregory Maxwell
2012-11-26 23:44 ` Luke-Jr
2012-11-27 0:16 ` Gregory Maxwell
2012-11-27 0:26 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-27 0:45 ` Rick Wesson
2012-11-27 1:09 ` Gavin
2012-11-27 8:44 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-27 0:44 ` Luke-Jr
2012-11-26 23:38 ` Rick Wesson
2012-11-26 23:52 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-11-27 0:02 ` Rick Wesson
2012-11-27 0:31 ` Luke-Jr
2012-11-27 0:37 ` Rick Wesson
2012-11-27 2:16 ` Walter Stanish
2012-11-27 2:47 ` Gregory Maxwell
2012-11-27 3:16 ` Walter Stanish
2012-11-27 3:29 ` Rick Wesson
2012-11-27 3:31 ` Walter Stanish
2012-11-27 3:54 ` Rick Wesson
2012-11-27 4:17 ` Walter Stanish
2012-11-27 8:43 ` Michael Gronager
2012-11-27 10:23 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-27 10:42 ` Michael Gronager
2012-11-27 11:36 ` Pieter Wuille
2012-11-27 11:46 ` Michael Gronager
2012-11-27 12:03 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-27 12:39 ` Michael Gronager
2012-11-27 14:05 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-11-27 14:26 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-11-28 13:55 ` Walter Stanish
2012-11-27 17:03 ` Andy Parkins
2012-11-27 17:14 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-27 17:26 ` Andy Parkins
2012-11-27 18:16 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-27 21:39 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-11-28 10:43 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-28 12:57 ` Peter Todd
2012-11-28 14:09 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-11-28 8:33 ` Peter Todd
2012-11-28 23:36 ` Roy Badami
2012-11-29 0:30 ` Watson Ladd
2012-11-29 8:16 ` slush
2012-11-29 16:11 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-11-29 17:07 ` Roy Badami
2012-11-29 17:30 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-11-29 17:31 ` Mike Hearn
2012-11-29 18:53 ` Roy Badami
2012-12-01 19:25 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-12-03 19:35 ` Mike Koss
2012-12-03 20:59 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-12-03 21:28 ` Mike Hearn [this message]
2012-12-03 22:26 ` Roy Badami
2012-12-03 22:34 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-12-03 22:48 ` Roy Badami
2012-12-16 21:15 ` Melvin Carvalho
2012-12-17 2:18 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-12-17 8:24 ` Melvin Carvalho
2012-12-17 9:19 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-17 9:31 ` Gary Rowe
2012-12-17 11:23 ` Melvin Carvalho
2012-12-17 17:57 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-12-20 16:53 ` Stephen Pair
2012-12-20 17:43 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-20 19:32 ` Stephen Pair
2012-12-21 17:05 ` Stephen Pair
2012-12-24 0:38 ` Elden Tyrell
2012-12-04 17:06 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-05 19:34 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-12-06 6:31 ` Andreas Petersson
2012-12-06 8:53 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-06 16:56 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-12-06 17:55 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-06 19:13 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-12-07 10:45 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-07 11:01 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-07 16:19 ` Gavin Andresen
2012-12-07 16:27 ` Mike Hearn
2012-12-06 18:13 ` Alan Reiner
[not found] ` <CALf2ePx5jS@mail.gmail.com>
2014-09-17 19:28 ` Vezalke
2012-12-03 21:42 ` Gregory Maxwell
2012-12-23 2:33 ` Mark Friedenbach
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