Lew,
Input from other standards efforts is always welcome in
Internet activities. I look forward to getting an online version of
the X.435 documentation distributed to the PEM-DEV list so that it can
be considered in the context of the PEM-MIME work. At this time I
believe we are working to maintain interoperability between (vanilla)
PEM and MIME-PEM implementations, in the same fashion that one can
maintain compatability between vanilla 822 mail UAs and MIME UAs. I'm
uncertain the extent to which this same level of interoperability is
feasible when one tries to factor in X.435.
We have discussed the creation of an X.400-PEM profile which
would take X.400 (P2/P22?) as input and which would be transported
using X.400 (P1/3/7) or SMTP, but it is not assumed that this would
provide real interoperability with 822 users. Given that model for
dealing with X.400 contents in general, it is not clear how X.435 will
fit into MIME-PEM.
Finally, while I would like to think that the Internet can be
a suitable transmission medium for EDI, EDI is just one of many
applications which employ the Internet. It may not be approrpiate to
adopt a course for MIME-PEM in which compatability with an EDI
standard (X.435) becomes the driving factor. However, to the extent
that we can develop a profile suitable for transporting X.435 as
another context type we should certainly be aware of the possibility.
Steve