george@ditmela.oz (George michaelson) (08/17/88)
Some people appear to be attempting to compare apples & oranges. -Yes,
they all address ``mail'' related issues, NO they are NOT all addressing
the SAME issues.
SMTP is a protocol
822 describes a message format
the X400 --->series<--- covers both formats & protocols
as well as other issues such as content conversion
and reliable transfer, fax, bitimage, private-defined & voice
encodings.
Cluttering a message with snipes about relative merits is counter-
productive. Yes, some X400 conformant implementations fail to talk to
each other. Early SMTP/822 systems had the same problems. -if the
latter had addressed as many issues as the X400 series perhaps they TOO
would fail to work between different implementations, even today.
Ditto comments about ``leading edge'' or ``technically possible''
solutions. -internationally X400 will have to talk ``down'' into very
cranky & non-digital systems as well as cope with ultra-fast nets. If
some lowest common denominator sneaks into the standards perhaps we
should accept that as a price to pay for global comms?
That may or may not be a tactical mistake for CCITT/ISO. History will
relate, because Internet opposition to them won't ultimately prevent
X400 use by PTT's nor probably its adoption within the Internet
itself. You want Iceland, Albania, France and Britain to AGREE to use
smtp/822 instead? be serious! -Britain & Iceland only stopped shooting each
others fishing boats 5 years ago, Albania don't talk to *nobody* and the
French won't speak to anyone who can't speak french back to them. If they're
agreeing about X400 I say we applaud them all, and get on with working round
the bugs.
RFC822, SMTP & X.400 are all of the fruit[ball] species, but they aren't
all citrus fruit. Some might be described as passion fruit, others as
breadfruit. -some are "lemons" and some are "peachy". They're all
worth eating!
-george
--
George Michaelson, CSIRO Division of Information Technology
ACSnet: G.Michaelson@ditmela.oz Phone: +61 3 347 8644
Postal: CSIRO, 55 Barry St, Carlton, Vic 3053 Oz Fax: +61 3 347 8987