Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!nuug!ifi!enag From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Newsgroups: comp.mail.multi-media Subject: Re: Multi-media mail standards; Forw: Use of ODA in the Internet Message-ID: Date: 8 Aug 90 19:32:48 GMT References: <1242.649050446@nma.com> <8652@cognos.UUCP> Sender: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 57 In-Reply-To: richardb@cognos.UUCP's message of 2 Aug 90 18:42:52 GMT Originator: enag@slembe.ifi.uio.no Nntp-Posting-Host: slembe.ifi.uio.no Dear Richard, This is in reply to your sarcastic "So we should all stick to ADM-5 terminals and use ASCII, eh?" comment in reply to my hope that "open" should not mean "open, that is, between 1130 and 1135 Wednesdays with a total eclipse of the moon" in respect to the binary coded "open systems interconnection" horrors in the field of what was once text. Multi-media is a very interesting topic. I don't think you should trivialize issues of readability where all the multiple media are not simultaneously representable in a convenient form. Neither do I think you should ignore the fact that some actual, real people, such as pro- grammers, will have to sit down and write the software you will use on your undoubtedly fancy 16-bit color 2048x2048 pel bitmap display device with stereo speakers and a fountain with goldfish. I do appreciate the efforts that are made to formalize structures and concepts, as in ODA and SGML, but I also think that when you need to write a device driver for a window system just to read your mail in 12-point Times fonts because that was what the sender deemed to be useful to you, it has gotten somewhat out of hand. It gets even worse when you have to spend the better part of a year to understand the soi disant standards involved, then shell out thousands of bucks to get a compiler for ASN.1, and try to break that damn bitstream into something readable by a human, eventually. Add to this the frustration that comes packaged with the next version of the standard, incompatible with the one you use. Now you might intervene and say: "But _I'm_ not going to write those programs!", implying that somebody else somewhere is going to do it for of you, somehow. I know that the relevant Working Group under ISO has not given the idea of somebody actually implementing their stuff the slightest consideration, at least not if they would do it for less than the gross national product of Chile. This, however, is not an excuse to pick up their bad aim and faulty decisions. After all, who cares what the underlying representation is, anyhow? EXCEPT the system programmers, the application programmers, the debuggers, the network folks, the toolkit designers, etc, etc, etc. These folks are not slaves of your binary-coded whims, Richard. They will have to get paid, lots!, if they are to do a job which is good enough to reach that Nirvana of Interconnectivity people are starting to spin mythologies around. Remember, one tiny little error in a binary coded stream is going to wreak havoc, fast. Some "it'll probably work -- who cares" programmer somewhere is bound to make some lowly error that will bring down your very important system at demo time. It's going to take ages to find the bug, unless you have bug-free "scopes" to peek into the fluttering world of binary representation. I don't write my programs in 12 pt Times Roman with a 630 Hz sub-carrier and animated syntax rules, I write them in plain ASCII -- and for that purpose, an ADM-5 will do. I'd like the ADM-5 to be able to used for testing, as well, and so would the sponsor of my project, unless of course, he knows that some undefined set of taxpayers is going to pay. "Have you hugged your programmer today?" -- [Erik Naggum] Gaustadalleen 21 +47-256-7822 N-0371 OSLO; NORWAY +47-260-4427 (fax)