Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!joyce!mordor!lll-tis!cwi.nl!piet From: piet@cwi.nl (Piet Beertema) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway Subject: Re: Avoid blanks... Message-ID: <8809190806.AA11069@sering.cwi.nl> Date: 19 Sep 88 11:06:29 GMT References: <1628:grimm@darmstadt.gmd.dbp.de> Sender: root@tis.llnl.gov Distribution: inet Organization: The Internet Lines: 23 Approved: post-x400-gateway@tis.llnl.gov Unfortunately it's often not the technical, but the political people who make the decisions. The British choice of "gold 400" *with* a blank in it is a good example. Blanks are allowed in attributes because they make sense in written language. Think for attributes like locality or common name, it MUST be possible to express something like "stateName=United States of America". Why should that be possible? I fail to see any technical reason for having to use an elaborate attribute like that rather than the much more common "stateName=USA" in you example. I can think of lots of political reasons for the long form though. I only can see a striking resemblance with the domain notation, where ordinary users for obvious reasons use the "short form" only, the "long form" almost never being used and meant only to satisfy governing boards and that sort of people... From this point of view (from the human language upon the computer applications) the British choice for the blank is quite natural. In what way is "gold 400" any better than "gold400"??? Piet