A message encoding specification and implementation where a receiver of an encoded message determines if the message can be decoded. If the receiver can decode the message, it does so and continues processing the message. If the receiver cannot decode the message, it returns a distinguished failure message to the sender, expecting the sender to resend the message using a different encoding scheme. When a sender receives the distinguished failure message that the receiver cannot decode the message, the sender encodes the message using an alternate encoding scheme, if one is available, and resends the message. The process continues until the sender has tried all available encoding schemes. If a sender exhausts the collection of available encoding schemes without finding one the receiver can successfully decode, the sender treats the failure as an error.