Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!helios.ee.lbl.gov!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!MIRSA.INRIA.FR!Christian.Huitema From: Christian.Huitema@MIRSA.INRIA.FR (Christian Huitema) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400 Subject: Re: Notes from the Bari meeting of the ISO messaging group Message-ID: <8910191023.AA08682(a)jerry.inria.fr> Date: 19 Oct 89 10:27:00 GMT References: Sender: root@ncis.tis.llnl.gov Distribution: inet Organization: The Internet Lines: 42 Approved: post-x400@tis.llnl.gov Jacob, You should be very careful when you state that the concise format: /Hugh/Smith//Nottingham University//Gold 400/GB mostly contains ``concepts which are natural for such a person to think about, like "Hugh", "Smith", "Nottingham University", "GB"''. For this should be absolutely true of any ORName: it should contain mostly user guessable fields, like surnames or corporation identifiers. The only non guessable elements are the administrative domain name and the private domain name; your example which use only the ADMD name in the address, omitting the PRMD name, is thus slightly biased. In principle, if PRMD managers were following the naming philosophy of X.400 (sound pompous, doesn't it?), one would only have to precise the administrative attributes on one's business card: provided that Country, ADMD and PRMD are properly filled in, any ORName containing sufficient attributes to identify uniquely the person should work: the MTA should undertake a search in its local directory, and then identify the mail box. We all know that this is not the case. At least, this is not the case in our naming schemes, which were strongly influenced by the ``user-account at host'' addressing philosophy of the early computer networks. For example, a message bound to: will reach its destination. But neither: nor And, still, the address of Ruediger is amongst the most user friendly, as it does not contain arbitrary identifications of hosts (e.g. OU=KOMEX), and as the surname field is indeed a surname. Just apply the same reasonning to: /P11015/DDAVM07/BITNET/DBP/DE and the opinion on user friendliness will be somewhat different! All that means that the (pompous?) "naming philosophy of X.400" has vanished in the sands of reality. What we have in fact is a set of tokens, some of which guessable some others less guessable, which constitute an address and should not be mispelled, completed or depleted. Hence the need of a very precise notation, with key words et all. Christian Huitema