RFC 67

Proposed Change to Host/IMP Spec to Eliminate Marking ✨

okay bestie, title block first 🎀 this is Request for Comments #67, written by W. Crowther at BBN, and it's marked [IMPORTANT] 🚨 it doesn't list any RFCs it obsoletes or updates, and there's no date printed up top, so just keep that in mind 💅

Before he jetted off to Norway 🧚, Dave Walden spotted a simple fix for the Host/IMP specs that would kill every "marking" problem 😭 the idea is to split the leader off from the text of regular messages and then send them as back-to-back messages instead of one packed blob 📦 that way the text always starts on a word boundary, no matter how long the words are on the machines involved 🦋 and this happens for both IMP-to-Host and Host-to-IMP messages 💖

we literally can't find a single downside 👀 and Host reactions went from "meh" all the way to "OBSESSED" 🔥 so we're tentatively planning to actually do it 🫶 the catch is that Host programs need changes too, so the new release has to be scheduled to line up with those 🎀 we're planning to send modified Host spec text plus a one week notice before the new release 🌸

if you see a flaw in this, or you're not vibing with it, please reach out to BBN quickly 🙈 a new version of the IMP program is already cooking 🍳

[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ] [ into the online RFC archives by Kai Henningsen 5/97 ]