Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Standardizing Email?
Message-ID: <27093@think.UUCP>
Date: 31 Aug 88 01:10:20 GMT
References: <788@vsi.UUCP> <79700010@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <738@etive.ed.ac.uk> <3454@phri.UUCP>
Sender: news@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 38

In article <3454@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>> I hope that structuring is just one of many possibilities for the
>> structure of a personal name field---otherwise it's not exactly standard! 
>
>	Not to mention that sometimes you're not even mailing to a person.
>What about mail to pseudo-users like postmaster or root?  Or mailing to a
>file or a program or a mailing list?

Did you read my original posting?  Or how about someone else's
posting, in which he copied the appropriate text straight out of the
standard?  Personal names are just one of several types of O/R Names.
When you aren't mailing to a person, you don't use the personal name
format.

This is analogous to many situations in the real world.  When sending
bills to a company, you might address it to "Accounts Payable
Department" rather than to a person.  And junk mail is generally
addressed to "Occupant".  Neither of these are personal names, because
the sender doesn't know (or doesn't care) the name of the intended
recipient.  The same is true of electronic mail, and X.400 has
provisions for that.  One of the other formats of O/R Names is:

	3. Organizational Attributes
	Examples: Organization name
		  Organizational unit
		  Position or role

So, using this format you could send mail to me by specifying

	Organization name: Thinking Machines Corporation
	Organizational unit: Systems Group
	Position: Systems Manager -- Lisp Machines

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar