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 vertebraeDistribution: inet Organization: The Internet Lines: 40 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'?