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From: lan_csse@netrix.nac.dec.com (CSSE LAN Test Account)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip,news.admin,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: What Is Difference Between Internet And X.400 Style Names?
Message-ID: <21700@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 3 Apr 91 15:37:55 GMT
References: <39557@cup.portal.com> <1991Feb25.185436.11447@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
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In article <1991Feb25.185436.11447@watserv1.waterloo.edu> broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) writes:
>In article <39557@cup.portal.com> Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) writes:
>>Can someone please explain the difference between X.400 and Internet-style
>>names of the form: USER@SITE.DOMAIN?  I had thought that X.400 names
>>were of the form /THIS=,/THAT=,/ANDWHATEVER=.
>
>They are.  The standard syntax "user@site.domain" is used throughout the
>Internet (and beyond!).  The "/this=,that=" is unique to X.400, which is
>part of the OSI spec.

In any case, part of the confusion is the assumption that a standard's
address format must be what is presented to the user.  This isn't true.
It's quite legal for a single system to have, say, an X.400 mailer, an
SMTP (internet) mailer, and a UUCP mailer installed.  The usual result
would be that the poor users have to figure out for themselves which of
the mailers talks to a given machine, and use the correct syntax for that
mailer.  Sendmail typically comes configured to require this.  But this
is extremely user-hostile, and there is no real excuse for it.

It is quite legal, and not hard to program, to have the user interface
accept addresses in multiple formats, parse them, figure out which of
the mailers can handle a job, and convert the address to that mailer's
format.  This is, for example, what the smail package does.  Sendmail
also has the capability (if you can figure out how to change sendmail.cf
to do it right ;-), and some vendors even supply sendmail configured to
do this.

Forcing the user to figure out bizarre mail syntaxes is inexcusable in
these days of mass email confusion.  That's what we have computers for.
If your mail interface can't do the translation, you should harass your 
vendor until they get it right.