I agree; a size field is almost essential -- particularly considering
how big hypermedia documents are going to get.
> My suggestion is that part of the message header is sent before beginning
> the document conversion (or whatever). The remainder and the document body
> content is sent later. The part of the header sent earlier on includes a
> processing attribute, e.g. "Processing: converting to html ..."
Another possibility for increased ergonomics is to provide for the
transfer of the first several paragraphs of a large document prior to
transfer of the rest of the document, so the use has something to look
at while the bulk of the communication is taking place.
Cheers,
Marc