a conversion is needed

Using email headers to implement classifier headers is simply the wrong way to go.

When displaying lists of emails, for example, it simply takes too long. And now the idea of searching (by classifier headers) has come up both in discussions with Norm and at work, and searching would be very very slow indeed with the current implementation.

The good thing is that TKCS properties are fully indexed. I simply need to change the implementation... and convert existing content.

Right now there are only two true descriptor headers, content-type and content-transfer-encoding. So it is going to be quite easy to identify which are the classifier headers, making the content conversion is quite doable. And if we dump a snapshot of the Ark (at a loss of all history), then the conversion starts to get easy.

What I need to do then is to insert a new release before 1.7 which focuses on the conversion and other administrative tools. Then when we move into 1.8, the Ark will have regained some of its lost agility.

Descriptor headers will then simply become headers, and classifier headers (which includes virtually all existing headers) then become tags.