Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!impch!boxdiger
From: boxdiger@impch.UUCP (Patrick Guelat)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Standardizing Email?
Message-ID: <298@impch.UUCP>
Date: 27 Aug 88 21:31:07 GMT
References: <788@vsi.UUCP> <1380@cloud9.UUCP> <3437@phri.UUCP> <1101@maynard.BSW.COM> <1988Aug22.181252.6125@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: boxdiger@impch.UUCP (Patrick Guelat)
Organization: ImproWare DataSystems Switzerland
Lines: 32

In article <1988Aug22.181252.6125@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
% In article <1101@maynard.BSW.COM> campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
% >RFC822 is incredibly primitive.  It has no provisions for encoding
% >messages with multiple parts.  It has no notion of different content
% >types -- everything must be 7-bit ASCII.  It provides no way to....
% >[..]
% >
% >It is nearly impossible to layer a real office automation system on
% >top of RFC822, as there is no _standard_ way to mail binary files,
% >revisable form documents, images, etc. etc.
% 
% And it's quite impossible, of course, to *layer* a standard for such things
% on top of RFC822?  (Of course, it's much more *interesting* to invent a new
% standard from the ground up, rather than adhering to silly, old-fashioned
% ideas like building on others' work and maintaining compatibility, but adults
% supposedly are capable of doing what's right, not just what's fun.)

And the new *interesting* standard is X.400. With X.400 you are able to
mail images, complete documents and so on... But how long will we have
to wait for this standard to be implemented and used on every system
connected to the internet ? Perhaps in 10 years or so, it'll work...
And in ten years there will be a discussion in comp.mail.uucp about
a new standard, because X.400 will be old-fashioned... :-). (BTW, it will
take another ten years for X.400 to work like it should...). Even today,
ten years (?!) after the introduction of RFC822, a lot of mailers and
sites on the internet doesn't even understand basic RFC822 rules or
they missunderstand them.... I don't know a lot about X.400 but I think
there are very good ideas behind it and it'll give us a lot of discussion
stuff and work to do for the next ten years :-)

	Greetings from the center of Europe
		Pat