NTIN36@gec-b.rutherford.ac.uk (Jim Craigie) (06/17/91)
As defined in the 1988 MHS Standards, the Message Store is simply an
in-tray with very sophisticated searching capabilities. While this
meets some user requirements, it does not adequately meet all user
requirements, in particular where a user has more than one system
on which he runs his UA (eg a workstation in the office and a PC
at home). Therefore some extensions to the Message Store have been
proposed to provide optional facilities to support storage of submitted
messages and to allow users to define folders to structure their own
store of messages so that the Message Store can serve as the user's
permanent repository of messages.
These proposed extensions have been the subject of an ISO New Work
Item Proposal (NP) ballot. To progress further, this ballot must
result in a simple majority of ISO National Bodies in favour of the work
*and* an indication from at least five National Bodies that they will
participate in the development of the standard.
Currently there is a majority in favour but only four indications of
willingness to participate from Australia, Belgium, Canada and UK.
[France, Germany, Japan and USA have opposed this new work.]
The ballot results will be reviewed on Tuesday or Wednesday this week.
If you wish to see this proceed you need to immediately get your
National Standards Body to Fax Bernadette St John at ANSI to indicate
that they can contribute your participation (which doesn't require
attendance at meetings - reviewing and commenting on documents at home
is sufficient to count as participation).
If you want Message Store Extensions to proceed you must act today!
Jim
PS The PP Message Store is implementing an intercept of these proposed
extensions to provide full functionality to XUA (the X windows UA for PP)
over (an extended) P7 protocol. It is intended that PP and XUA will be
aligned with the International Standard in due course so that other UAs
can be expected to exploit the full functionality of PPMS, and so that
XUA can provide full functionality when interworking with other Message
Stores. If the International Standards work doesn't get sufficient
support to proceed it becomes less likely that other products will be
able to exploit the extended functionality in PPMS and XUA.