Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 00:23:05 -0600
From: "William C. Green" <w(_dot_)green(_at_)utexas(_dot_)edu>
I disagree. Observe the following DN in User Friendly Notation and
corresponding email addresses:
William C Green, vs.
green(_at_)wowbagger(_dot_)cc(_dot_)utexas(_dot_)edu
Computation Center, or
University of Texas at Austin,
w(_dot_)green(_at_)utexas(_dot_)edu
Texas,
US
Yes, it's possible for a UA to display a DN in "User Friendly Notation",
but you wouldn't be able to type that into a MUA and expect it to work.
How is it supposed to know that "William C Green" is a common name, as
opposed to something else? Or that Texas is a State/Provice, as opposed
to a Organizational Unit?
Again, while it looks pretty to display, there are a lot of questions
that the User needs to know before he/she can devine a DN. Does "Texas"
need to be in there? In some cases, maybe perhaps not; the
organizational unit might be directly under US. Should it be
"University of Texas at Austin", or "UT Austin", or something else? Is
"Computation Center" a requirement or not?
I claim that the task of a user to figure out what a DN should be is at
least as difficult as trying to figure out what an internet email
address should be. So if you're just going to give the user something
and/or ask them to memorize something, since they're NOT going to be
able to figure it out, at least a "w(_dot_)green(_at_)utexas(_dot_)edu" is
shorter and
easier to type! Not to mention that it fits better on a business card
than something like:
"/C=US/SP=Texas/OU=University of Texas at Austin/OU=Computation
Center/CN=William C Green"
No kidding, I've actually seen X.400 address written out like that on
business cards; I always that that was the best advertisement in the
world for Internet email addresses. :-)
Before we can seriously advocate the use of X.500 style DN's, someone
needs to pay some very serious attention to the attendant user interface
issues --- especially, how a user is supposed to enter one of these
hideous DN's into their system; asking them to type it really isn't an
option. I suppose eventally we could put mag-stripes on the back of our
business cards, and simply have people swipe our DN's into their
computers!
- Ted