At 8:42 AM 2/10/95, Ned Freed wrote:
I've been in this position so many times, I've lost track. And to be fair,
X.400 has proved to be an especially fertile ground for these sorts of
"backwards solutions" -- much more so than Internet protocols have.
IMO, that's because the people involved in defining and implementing
Internet protocols have always been motivated by the desire to make
interoperability between different systems a principal goal.
In the email world that becomes crucially important, as more organizations
rely on electronic mail to facilitate commerce and communication. One
aspect of the growth of the use of Internet protocols is that it attracts
authors who don't always appreciate the subtlety of interoperability issues
-- the need to be generous in what you accept and specific in what you
send.
That's the direct cause of the problem Doug Sanborn is experiencing.
It was out of the desire to insure interoperability that we began this
discussion. Yes, I am frustrated that some implementors have against all
probability interpreted "unique" in such an interesting way. However,
having discovered this fact, as Steve has noted elsewhere, we will generate
boundaries that take account of this behavior of other email clients.
john noerenberg
jwn2(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com
noerenberg.j (Applelink)
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Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you got til it's gone
Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi", 1969
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