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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!qantel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!ncr-sd!greg
From: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Mail addressing and routing
Message-ID: <278@ncr-sd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncr-sd.278
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 05:09:02 EDT
References: <644@adobe.UUCP> <734@vortex.UUCP> <1156@umcp-cs.UUCP> <263@ncr-sd.UUCP> <1370@umcp-cs.UUCP> <271@ncr-sd.UUCP> <1451@cbosgd.UUCP>
Reply-To: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Organization: NCR Corporation, Torrey Pines
Lines: 42

In article <1451@cbosgd.UUCP> mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) writes:
>We looked at the possibility of doing the ihnp4/post style thing as
>part of a standard.  (Basically, mail to ihnp4!mark.r.horton works,
>as will as ihnp4!gjm, the former is a person name, the latter a host.)
>There was one killer problem: what do you do with ihnp4!horton?  Is
>it a login name or a surname?  What if it's both?  How do you decide
>this syntactically, given the layering of a real system?

I assume that gjm is a login id, not a host.  Or maybe you went to a
party where Gary was a host???

Anyway, the heuristic used by ihnp4's code seems to be that if a name
has a dot in it, it is syntatctically a person-name to be resolved.  I
suspect that if I sent mail to ihnp4!horton it would tell me that "horton"
was not a known user (although that may be a bad example -- how about
ihnp4!bourne?).  I suppose the question is how many systems use login
names (mail identifiers) that routinely include periods (or underscores,
or some separator we can agree on).  Somehow,
>	ihnp4!/pn=Horton_Mark_R
or even
	/pn=mark.horton@ihnp4	(is that slash required?)
isn't as aesthetic as
	mark.horton@ihnp4
although this may be a case where only the mail transfer agent has to
deal with such strangenesses and the user agents can hide the uglyness.

>which is a special case of a more general MHS X.400 address. ....

I've heard about X.400, but I'm afraid I don't know much about it.  Is
there a copy that I can get easily?  Even an ARPAnet copy would be OK;
I think I might be able to get my ARPAnet relay to FTP it for me.

>As to accepting a public domain piece of software, the issues have
>nothing to do with the mailer, but rather involve market demand and
>support.  If there is market demand for such a feature and a program
>to do it were dropped into their lap, the only real questions are
>whether it fits into the long term plans, and whether resources can
>be allocated to support it.  None of these issues is at all clear.

Food for thought......
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo    Greg@ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA