mss+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Mark Sherman) (12/16/89)
Fascinating. How is it that you came to the conclusions (1) ASN.1 makes a great deal of sense when used to hold multi-media documenst and (2) [electronic mail] doesn't need to parsed in real-time. I can name at least one project that was canceled because the ASN.1 requirement of ODA is such a pain. (We were certainly never thrilled by it for ODA.) -Mark
J.Crowcroft@CS.UCL.AC.UK (Jon Crowcroft) (12/16/89)
>Fascinating. How is it that you came to the conclusions (1) ASN.1 makes >a great deal of sense when used to hold multi-media documenst and (2) >[electronic mail] doesn't need to parsed in real-time. I can name at >least one project that was canceled because the ASN.1 requirement of ODA >is such a pain. (We were certainly never thrilled by it for ODA.) Mark, 1. i wouldnt claim ASN.1 ever made *much* sense 2. the PP X.400 system has channels to convert inbound ODIF into locally real time readable formats (e.g. slate) - MTAs do not need to parse e-mail in real time (by definition a spooled communication) . (actually, you parse ASN.1 offline, and generate *concrete* syntax parsers, that can easily run in real time - a recent survey we did uncovered at least 9 such parser/generators). however, if digital multi-medi conferencing were widely available, whatever presentation standard it used would clearly take the absurd load off MTAs when used for e-mail as well actually, the position i take is that TCP/IP got it right for end to end and interconnection for networks of the 70s and 80s, OSI got it right for 19th century application support, and no-one has it right for the next decade yet... and that means we've only got a week to develop and field transaction protocols, decent XDRs, congestion proof networks, and usable applications that dont take a minimum of a Sun 4/330 to run as fast as people (like our X.500 and X.400 implementations) - then we can start making nice sounds about integrated video/voice/data in an Internet without sounding like infernal optimists (hopefully some secret consortium is about to unleash such a system for free so there's a nice de-facto solution just like NFS and X got done, but this time they'll repair some of the mistakes [and write it all in Algol 68:-)]) so thats my message for a happy winter solstice... cheers jon