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Basic requirements of a message

1991-10-10 01:03:46
Unfortunately I have now for a few months not had time to read and
comment the large flow of messages in this list, but I have to add 
something as it seems like the basic requrements of a message will not
be fullfilled.


The BASIC requirements for a user using email to send a message with
is that the message can be expressed in the language the user is
communicating with! The simplest form of a message concists of a
header part and a body part. The most important headers are
sender (From), receiver (To, Cc), date and subject.

When the basic requirements of a message is fullfilled one can
move to add additional wishes like font information and graphics.


The current new RFC spends a lof of space on additional wishes, 
but does NOT fullfill the basic requirements of a message (except
for people where the 26 letters in the english alphabet is enough)!

Yes, for a log time the basic requirements of a message has been
fullfilled for you who speaks english and it is understandable
that you want to add new non-basic things. But we others have
not even our basic requirements fullfilled. For the novice user
that uses the computer as a simple tool to send messages and
does other simple things that does not require a deep understanding
of the computer, it is unacceptable that some part of a message
must be written in english.

Basic requirements should go in the main RFC for email. Additional
extensions like muliple body parts should go in a separate RFC, not
the other way around.


We in the nordic countries started working on international email
because we wanted to be able to send email in our own language,
not because we wanted binary files or multiple body parts.

    Dan Oscarsson


Dan Oscarsson                              Department of Computer Science
                                           Lund Institute of Technology
e-mail:  Dan(_dot_)Oscarsson(_at_)dna(_dot_)lth(_dot_)se          Box 118
                                           S-221 00 Lund, Sweden

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