Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: davecb@nexus.yorku.ca (David Collier-Brown) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400 Subject: Re: Printable format (was: Re: ISO/CCITT meeting report) Message-ID: <13875@yunexus.YorkU.CA> Date: 15 Aug 90 19:56:12 GMT References: <9008150825.AA09728@piring.cwi.nl> Organization: York U. Computing Services Lines: 76 Approved: usenet@ICS.UCI.EDU x-attn: jns someone declaims... > I suppose that a simple, readable, business-card-printable, E-mail > address is too much to ask for piet@cwi.nl (Piet Beertema) replies >Really? Plain RFC822 e-mail addresses are simple, readable and >business-card-printable. And even today's UUCP addresses usually >meet these requirements. That having been said, let's pull the discussion ``up'' one level and address the meta-problem: 1) We wish a useful, unambiguous machine-interpretable address, and 2) We wish a concise, possibly elliptical, human-interpretable address. We can do any of the following 0) do nothing: let them be incompatible (and reduce the viability of email somewhat) 1) use the machine address, at a cost in comprehensibility, 2) use the human address, at a cost in ambiguity, or 3) use a compromise between the two. [Please note I haven't said anything about "/,.=;" in the above: they're just parts of the machine address... and in principle are interconvertable.] Ok, let's consider what a compromise might be. I'll start by proposing a form of the human address, annotated with required disambiguating information. This might be { "."}* "," "," "," "," "." Note that the separators are "," and "." in this positional notation. The disambiguating information is called , and is a machine-specific annotation required to allow mechanical delivery to a semi-active MUA called a letter-carrier. Following Piet and the other commentator's lead, the public carrier and management domains are irrelevant to the addressee and/or sender, and go in the . Note that they are still required by the mechanical transport, the MTAs. They also have to be available to the final MTA/MUA to help select the recipient unambiguously and identify misadressed mail. I can write the above with as much extra formatting (whitespace, font changes, embedded newlines) as I want: its still unambiguous without. I can put it on both letters and business cards, and as long as I don't leave something out, letters addressed with a copy of it get delivered. Sometimes they come back with ``provide proper postal code!'' if I leave the machine-specific data out, but that's my fault (;-)). Another possible positional notation would use "." and "@" as separators. A third might use "/" or ";" A possible non-positional notation might use "/", keywords and "=". This raises the obvious question: do humans need a non-positional notation? My ergonomics training makes me say ``conditionally no''. (Ie, I have to weasel a bit because very complex addressee formats **might** need one: say formats with eight data items which are not identifiable by their content). If they do not, then its is merely a matter of defining an information- preserving transform between formats using "@.", "/" and ";" and a standard for the . That is not a simple task, mind you, but it's at least narrowly defined (:-)) --dave -- David Collier-Brown, | davecb@Nexus.YorkU.CA, ...!yunexus!davecb or 72 Abitibi Ave., | {toronto area...}lethe!dave Willowdale, Ontario, | "And the next 8 man-months came up like CANADA. 416-223-8968 | thunder across the bay" --david kipling