Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lll-winken!lll-tis!NRTC.NORTHROP.COM!Stef
From: Stef@NRTC.NORTHROP.COM (Einar Stefferud)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
Subject: Re: DRAFT/2: Recommendation for a Short Hand X.400 Address Notation
Message-ID: <2965.590125832@nma.com>
Date: 12 Sep 88 13:50:32 GMT
References: <5470*denise@priam.cern>
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ADMINISTRIVIA:  For our IFIP-GTWY correspondents who may want to send
mail into the rare-wg1 mailing list in connection with this discussion,
I believe that "rare-wg1%vax.runit.unit.uninett@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk" will
work correctly from Internet Sites.  @nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk is authorizd to
pass mail to the rare-wg1 list address in the unregistered "uninett"
domain.  

SUBSTANCE:  I do not want to indicate in any that I do not appreciate
the need or the difficulty that lurks in attempts to solve the ORAddress
Shorthand Problem.  

But, I am somewhat concernd that the document is written so it will not
be understood to be a RARE standard that only applies to the RARE
community.  People outside the RARE community may be quite confused by
it, if they ever see it.  I expect that many non-RARE people will
certainly see ORAddresses written in RARE Notation.  

I am pleased to note that the document does not suggest that RFC987 be
rewritten to comply with the chosen RARE WG1 <keywords>, but I wonder
how things work when your RARE WG1 keywords are encountered in an RFC987
gateway, on mail from an Internet Site, on its way to an X.400 site.
This situation is certain to arise.  

HUMOUR:  I find it highly amusing to see how much user friendliness is
generated by our User Friendly ORAddresses.  Of course, in order to be
able to "more or less deduce addresses from ordinary business card
information" we must accept some degree of ambiguity due to the
non-standards-abiding nature of the worldwide business card printing
industry.  Unfortunately, ambiguity in addresses is not friendly, even
on good old fashioned Postal Mail.

Quite frankly, I see this whole thing as a monstrous case of technology
gone awry in the interests of being friendly, without first finding out
what "friendly" really means.  What started out as an attempt to emulate
a warm and wiggly puppy has now grown up to be a real dog.  

Dare we chuckle?  I hope so!  Cheers...\Stef