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This was a similar argument made by the IETF group working on the Websocket framing protocol when I argued they should make the framing orthogonal to the data layer. I quit because they were not going to change their mind and I presume they did not adopt my proposal.
I think it is not a valid argument because many implementations may not correctly implement the more obtuse seeking without an index. Thus we get the worst of both worlds.
I just don't buy this notion that we should dumb down and make inferior standards, because people are lazy to write and test software properly. Geez did Vint Cerf follow that theology when he design TCP/IP? Did we conflate all the network layers and collapse them into one layer because the OSI model is complex. Hell no! The End-to-End Principle is fundamental!