TELOPT_CONTEXT proposal

By morwen@morwen.net aka Orange@Cryosphere.org

problem:
  a mud client sends commands to the server
  a mud server responds to the commands with data
  there is no way to determine what data is a reponse to what commands

#define TELOPT_CONTEXT telnet_byte(0x60)
#define TELOPT_CONTEXT_START telnet_byte(0)
#define TELOPT_CONTEXT_ACK_START telnet_byte(1)
#define TELOPT_CONTEXT_END telnet_byte(2)
#define TELOPT_CONTEXT_ACK_END telnet_byte(3)

proposal:
  server offers IAC WILL TELOPT_CONTEXT
  client accepts IAC DO TELOPT_CONTEXT

  client sends commands tagged with TELOPT_CONTEXT like so

    IAC SB TELOPT_CONTEXT TELOPT_CONTEXT_START [arbitrary printable bytes] IAC SE
    [the command]
    IAC SB TELOPT_CONTEXT TELOPT_CONTEXT_END

  the server, when sending the repsonse to this message sends

    IAC SB TELOPT_CONTEXT TELOPT_CONTEXT_ACK_START [arbitrary printable bytes matching the ones sent by the client] IAC SE
    [the response]
    IAC SB TELOPT_CONTEXT TELOPT_CONTEXT_ACK_END