ggr@hudson.UUCP (Guy Riddle) (03/21/84)
CCITT is supposedly working on standards for interconnecting electronic mail networks, to be known as the X.400 Series. The protocols involved are supposed to cover the interconnection of "public message systems" and of private ones into the public ones. Does anyone know what they are up to? === Guy Riddle == AT&T Bell Laboratories, Piscataway ===
julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (03/21/84)
Yes, people with the right connections can get a rather fat volume from Bell Northern research. Ian Cunningham (BNR) is the reporter for the CCITT group. The final draft of X.400-X.430 was fixed at Brighton UK in October 83, and will go to the Study Group VII this month some time, and to CCITT Plenary later this year. Earlier drafts of the documents have been circulated within IFIP Working group 6.5. The draft recommendations are numbered as follows: DR X.400 - Message handling systems: System Model-Service elements DR X.401 - " " ": Basic Service Elements and Optional User Facilities DR X.408 - " " ": Encoded Information Type Conversion Rules DR X.409 - " " ": Presentation Transfer Syntax and Notation defines an arcane variation on BNF DR X.410 - " " ": Remote Operations and Reliable Transfer Service DR X.411 - " " ": Message Transfer Layer defines the P1 and P3 protocols DR X.420 - " " ": Interpersonal Messaging User Agent Layer defines the P2 protocol DR X.430 - " " ": Access Protocol for Teletex Terminals
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (03/23/84)
For those wondering what the flavor of X.400 is, I ordered a copy and glanced through it. (The set of booklets is about 2 inches thick.) I have not had time for a detailed reading. I was trying to find out what an address looked like. Most of the publication is very broad and avoids overall examples, but one of the booklets talks about mailing addresses. What really disappointed me was that addresses are specified with binary field tags, rather than ASCII text. There is an amazing variety of attributes you can specify for a person, such as the country or sub-country-unit they are in, who they work for, their first or last name, and so on. But you can't just type it. Apparently some unspecified user interface is expected to get this information from you and assemble a binary description. It was not obvious to me how to use such a system, or how to advertise your electronic mailing address. Mark
julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (03/24/84)
Directory services have not yet been specified. And yes, a 'user agent' program is supposed to provide the user interface. The X.4xx recommendations are only concerned with what happens on the network, not with what kind of user interface may be built. I agree with Mark, the definitions are fairly impenetrable. I wish there were more worked examples in the definitions. The protocols are quite different from anything now happening on Usenet (or ARPAnet), and require an 8-bit wide data path for session connections. Everything is encoded in a system of 'self-describing data structures' -- where anything starts with a length code and type code(s), which is where the 8-bit wide data path is needed even if the stuff being encoded is ultimately just ASCII text strings.