Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-tis!E.MS.UKY.EDU!david
From: david@E.MS.UKY.EDU (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
Subject: Re: Avoid blanks...
Message-ID: <10274@s.ms.uky.edu>
Date: 20 Sep 88 23:17:07 GMT
Sender: root@tis.llnl.gov
Reply-To: David Herron -- One of the vertebrae 
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Approved: post-x400-gateway@tis.llnl.gov


Granted that email addresses are *currently* character strings.
I doubt that they should *always* be character strings.

As email use grows and becomes more prevalent then it will have
to mutate out of the simple stuff that we do nowadays.  Even though
that 'simple' stuff is already fairly complicated and is quite
a number of steps *beyond* what it was a few years ago.

5 years ago domains were 'user.host@domain' ... or at least that
was one of the suggestions..

5 years from now email may be so widespread that the domain system
we have now will be teetering under the weight...  An example
is the .com domain.  The original design didn't have room for
tiny companies.  Instead the 2nd level organizations were envisioned
to be something on the order of 100+ hosts.  But there have been
a number of tiny one man companies get 2nd level .com domain
names.  How long will the .com organizers be able to keep
that up?

I can just see an address like:

joe_blow@#3.456.Peyton_Place.Amherst.MA.10203.US

Which is fortunately a fairly tame address.

Mark, maybe you're right.  Maybe X.400 won't catch on.  I kind of
hope so since if X.400 *did* catch on MMDF would fade away and
I'd have to find something else to maintain :-).  But in the
really long term I don't see 'character strings' being the
be all and end all of email addressing.  Further it sounds to
me if the development is as a slightly critical point where
a format is about to be chosen, and which may easily affect
other developments...
-- 
<-- David Herron; The official MMDF guy of the 1988 Olympics 
<-- ska: David le casse\*'      {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<-- 				What does the phrase "Don't work too hard" 
<-- have to do with the decline of the american 'work ethic'?