JMAP for Calendars, Contacts and Files Now in Stalwart

Email was never a binary protocol. Notoriously so, it's why MIME types and MIME encodings get so complicated.

Most of the "old internet" protocols (email, FTP, even HTTP itself) were bootstrapped on top of built-mostly-for-plaintext Telnet. HTTP as the new telnet has a bunch of improvements when it comes to binary data, request/response-based data flows, and some other considerations. HTTP/3 is even inherently a binary protocol, it's lack of "telnet-compatibility" one of the concerns about switching the majority of the web to it.

vCard/vCal/iCard/iCal were also deeply "plaintext formats". JSON is an improvement because it is more structured, even more efficient, than those predecessors. JSON may not look efficient, but it compresses extremely well and can be quite efficient in gzip and Brotli streams.

I feel like "JSON over HTTP" is a subtle improvement over "custom text formats over telnet", even if it doesn't sound like "binary protocol efficiency" at first glance. Especially as HTTP/3 pushes HTTP more efficient and more "binary", and arguably "more fundamental/basic" with HTTP/3 even taking over more roles in the TCP/UDP layer of the internet stack. (Telnet would never try to replace TCP.) HTTP isn't the worst bootstrap layer the internet could use to build new protocols and apps on top of. Sure, it would be neat to see more variety and experiments outside of the HTTP stack, too, but HTTP is too useful at this point not to build a bunch of things on top of it instead of as their own from-scratch protocol.

Additionally, as much people like to harp about "telcos focusing on connection-oriented protocols while we ran loops around them with packets", the reality is that NCP and later TCP pretty much focused on emulating serial lines around, and one of the earliest ways to access ARPAnet outside of machines directly on it was through calling into a TIP which set up bidirectional stream from your modem to a port on some host.

I made up ULFI because I thought MIME has some problems.

> JSON may not look efficient

Efficiency is not the only issue; there is also the consideration of e.g. what data types you want to use. JSON does not have a proper integer type, does not have a proper binary data type (you must encode it as hex or base64 instead), and is limited about what character sets can be used.

(Also, like other text formats, escaping will be needed.)

> I feel like "JSON over HTTP" is a subtle improvement over "custom text formats over telnet"

I think it can be, depending on the specific use; sometimes it isn't, and will make it worse. (HTTP does have the advantage of having URLs and virtual hosting, although I think it adds too much complexity more than should be needed.) However, I still think that DER is generally better than JSON.

> HTTP isn't the worst bootstrap layer the internet could use to build new protocols and apps on top of.

I think it depends on the specific application. However, even then, I think there are better ways than using HTTP with the complexity that it involves, most of which should not be necessary (even though a few parts are helpful, such as virtual hosting).

  > JSON does not have a proper integer type

If the answer is monetary values, then those should never be floats, and should not be represented in JSON as such. E.g. a dollar and a half should be represented as 150 cents. This follows even for sub-cent precision.

Binary protocols just meant you actually needed to implement serialiser/deserialiser and similar tooling instead of writing dumbest possible riff on strtok() and hoping your software won't be used anymore once DoD internet becomes mature

That's just not true. Telnet and SMTP are built on top of TCP. They live on the same layer. They were originally both protocols that transmitted data with printable ascii, hence why they look similar. There are many other protocols like Telnet and SMTP that worked like that, auch as nntp, irc, and yes, even http.

HTTP sorta acts as stump of ROSE with bit of ACSE. In addition it provides a bit of basic layer for passing some extra attributes that might be considered in-band or out (or side?) band to the actual exchange.

The idea with packets is that you don't need to reserve N bit/s of each link along the route to whatever system you're talking to; instead you just repeatedly say "here's a chunk of data, send it to X". It's not really relevant that the typical thing to do with these packets is to build a reliable stream on top of them, what matters is that everything except the endpoints can be a lot dumber.

Using cents instead of dollars sounds fine until you have to do math like VAT, you really need decimal math for that.

While the grammar is specified (that’s what JSON is, after all), the runtime representation is unspecified. A conformant JSON parser can parse “1” as 1.0. They can be backed by doubles, or singles, or arbitrary precision.

That's also why the majority of OIDs in SNMP are rooted in the 1.3.6 hierarchy, which belongs to the DoD.

If anything, HTTP/3 running on top of QUIC forced shitty middlebox vendors to de-ossify by permitting any QUIC-based protocol, as they cannot practically distinguish a new HTTP/3 connection from a QUIC connection.

This still requires you to set up a connection beforehand, but doesn't require you to reserve resources you might not be using.