Re: Binary Data

Tim Bray (tbray@textuality.com)
Sun, 22 Feb 1998 16:49:22 -0800


At 12:59 PM 2/22/98 -0800, Don Park wrote:
>BASE64 is MIME content tranfer encoding algorithm defined in RFC 2045. It
>is used to map binary data into a range of characters.

What's real important from the XML point of view is that (unless my
memory fails me) base64 has the nice property that it uses a very
restricted range of characters, which happens not to include < or &,
and thus can be tossed into an XML doc just about anywhere without
breaking anything. I think a predefined base64 notation attribute
is a no-brainer good idea, so obvious that it can't be new. -Tim