daveb@geac.UUCP (Dave Brown) (06/11/87)
>Recently I was tasked to write-up an internal memo that compared >X.400 to our electronic mail system that we sell as part of our >OA package (OfficePower). Well, the X.400 series (8 of 'em) standards >are *very* difficult to read casually. When are those standards >writers going to start writing documentation that is isn't so abstract, >terse, and hard to understand? > >Maybe we need a standard for writing standards? :-) Yes, we actually do need such a standard. The problem is, how do we achieve such a thing? [if discussion occurs, it should not be in this mailgroup --dave] A suggestion re X.400 is to compare the standard with those written by Jon Postel (not *Postal*) as ARPAnet RFC's, and with current work in specifying communications standards with object- oriented languages. There should be about three areas to compare and contrast Formalisms for stating DFA's. -- mechanical verifiability, DFA compilers like Wart. Data-driven design methods. -- currently fuzzy, but interesting. A good but *old* reference is M.A. Jackson "System Design", London (Prentice-Hall) 197?. Modelling methods for protocols. -- converging with DDD toward object orientation. And no doubt there are more. Or we could trivialize the question by requiring protocol documenters to be published poets... In the meantime, do you think we could get Postel to translate X.400 into a natural language? --dave (I', almost serious about that last idea) brown