>>> 2. Network protocols like HTTP and MIME only understand files
Love when someone says something that makes my brain work!
For the most part you're spot on. HTTP has multipart messages that in theory could be extended to be composite of anything. So we could have those bundles! Oddly we can send to the server with a multipart message (forms)!!
I think that MIME is an interesting slice the OTHER way. You could store versions of the same document in a directory so HTML and JSON and XML OR a video or image in two formats and serve them up based on the MIME request.
Now if we could make one of those a multi part message...
The problem is the case where you want to upload or attach >1 document that's actually a directory. You need a way to signal that the first 3 files are a part of document A, and the next 5 are part of document B, and although you could invent a file name convention to express this nothing understands it. Email clients would show 7 attachments, web server APIs would show 7 files, browsers would need to be patched to let you select bundles in the file picker and then recursively upload them, how progress tracking works would need to change, etc.
And then how do you _download_ them? Browsers don't understand MIME at download time.
None of it is hard to solve. But, nobody ever did, and the value of doing things this new way is usually going to be lower than the value of smooth interop with everyone's different browser/OS/email/server combos.
Love when someone says something that makes my brain work!
For the most part you're spot on. HTTP has multipart messages that in theory could be extended to be composite of anything. So we could have those bundles! Oddly we can send to the server with a multipart message (forms)!!
I think that MIME is an interesting slice the OTHER way. You could store versions of the same document in a directory so HTML and JSON and XML OR a video or image in two formats and serve them up based on the MIME request.
Now if we could make one of those a multi part message...