Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
What is "cron?" and how does it interface with the originator defined as
the MSA? is cron an MTA or MUA?
It's a daemon that runs on UNIX systems which can be told to
run specific programs at specific periodic times. It is neither an
MTA nor an MUA; it is an example of something that is an "author" in
this context but is not also a human.
It was a rhetorical question. I don't think its necessary and IMO,
unprecedented.
That doesn't make sense in the case of cron because it doesn't
have an MTA component. It invokes a local MTA.
Exactly my point Murray. For the level of knowledge this document
needs, people are presumed to be aware what is a MUA, MSA, MTA, MDA
and how they are used and invoked is independence of specific OS details.
I personally say take it out. Not needed. Thats an *nix idea. Windows
people generally do not know what that is.
I think it's best to have an example. "cron" seems to be an
ideal one, though I'd be happy to add a second, Windows-specific,
example if there is one. If not, changing 'such as "cron"' to 'such
as the "cron" UNIX utility' seems a better change to me.
In principle, examples are good, but IMO this particular one seems out
of place. Think in terms of the context of where it is applied to author:
author: The agent that provided the content of the message being
sent through the system. The author delivers that content to the
originator in order to begin a message's journey to its intended
final recipients. The author can be a human using an MUA (Mail
User Agent) or a common system utility such as "cron", etc.
If the intent is to suggest to the readers there is something special
"cron" when it comes to the author, i.e. may not be real author or not
exist, then I can see it may apply. Bu I don't think that is what you
were trying to say here.
I think what you are essentially saying here is the distinction
between a Human (UI) Agent and Automated (no UI) Mail Agent. So
perhaps the last sentence could be restated :
The author can be a human using an MUA (Mail User Agent) or
an automated mail robot with an MTA.
I just think for this MLM I-D which already requires a high-level of
intelligence, makes that part unnecessary. Perhaps you can also state
also like you did with originator (and may for verifier):
author: The agent that provided the content of the message being
sent through the system. The author delivers that content to the
originator in order to begin a message's journey to its intended
final recipients. This authoring process is often referred to as
the Mail User Agent (MUA) or MTA sending mail to the MSA or MDA.
Anyway, its a nit and just thought it was not necessary nor correctly
applied here.
--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com
http://santronics.blogspot.com
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