Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!media-lab!snorkelwacker!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: usenet%planet@uunet.uu.NET Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400 Subject: (none) Message-ID: <9007190817.aa05013@piglet.planet.bt.co.uk> Date: 19 Jul 90 16:58:52 GMT Lines: 61 Approved: usenet@ICS.UCI.EDU x-attn: jns Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400 Path: usenet From: tim@piglet.planet.bt.co.uk (Tim Maude,B81 G61,6734,) Subject: Re: ISO conferencing? Message-ID: <1990Jul19.071740.4968@planet.bt.co.uk> Sender: usenet@planet.bt.co.uk (Usenet News Manager) Reply-To: tim@piglet.planet.bt.co.uk Organization: RT743, BT Research Labs, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, UK. References: Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 07:17:40 GMT From article , by bob@morningstar.COM (Bob Sutterfield): > (I asked on the general ISO group last week and drew only silence, so > perhaps the X.400 groups would be more appropriate. I'm relatively > new to ISO stuff, and perhaps this is an old topic. If so, please > forgive me and help me come up-to-date!) > > RFC822 is to RFC1036 as X.400 is to ??? > > (or, alternatively phrased,) > > mail is to news as MHS IPM is to ??? > > ..... more stuff There is no real equivalent to the news in OSI yet. A bit of history... In X.400 84 the only provision for one-to-many communication is to address a message to a distribution list that you hold in your own user agent. Many people thought that this was not good enough (including me) and complained - suggesting alternatives. The one alternative that got picked up (or rather added) in the 1988 X.400 was distribution lists. The consept of the distribution list in 88 was that of a distribution point which held the distribution list. You mail to that point and it distributes on from there. These can be nested, so that one distribution point can mail out to another and so one (with special prototcols to avoid looping - thus making the 88 and 84 prototcols subtely incompatible). Now you can try and duplicate the news by means of 88 DLs (as they are known). Clearly, the distribution list has to cover the whole world and there has to be a separate DL for each newsgroup. Each message sent to the newsgroup would have to be mailed to the root of the DL first and then be expanded upon from there. This mechanism is not the same as the news. I would like to put out a request to those of you who understand the news protocols a bit better than me (that won't be hard) to put out a simple explanation of who it works - maybe we can draw up a list of differences. In conclusion - the ISO world has not realised the benefits of the news yet and so it has not investigated it. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Maude RT7431 email: tim@planet.bt.co.uk British Telecom Research Laboratories phone: +44 473 646734 Martlesham Heath fax: +44 473 642163 Ipswich IP5 7RE U.K. -------------------------------------------------------------------