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From: mark@cblpf.ATT.COM (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
Subject: Re: Response to comments on DRAFT/2
Message-ID: <8809211418.AA17842@cblpf.ATT.COM>
Date: 21 Sep 88 18:18:11 GMT
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> A mapping between the DRAFT Recommendation we are discussing here and any
> X.400 user interface is totally outside the scope of the DRAFT
> recommendation's objectives.
> 
>   o To simplify local X.400 User Guides which should define the mapping
>     between the recommended notation and the local user interface.

Sure seems to me that the most effective way to simplify local user guides
would be to recommend a standard way to write addresses.  This does not
mean to imply that the user interfaces of every X.400 mailer in the world
would be standardized.  Merely that the way in which X.400 addresses are
written as single character strings (as opposed to, say, as screen forms,
or some other representation) ought to be consistent where possible.

> Either
>    1). a critical mass agree that RFC 987 syntax will be used at a sufficient
>        number of user interfaces to make it a de facto X.400 notation.

I think this is the case, and I hear a lot of people on this mailing list
who seem to agree.  The objections I'm hearing are not from people pointing
out other de facto standards (as far as I'm aware, there are none) but
from people concerned about perceived technical shortcomings of 987.

In particular, the major objection seems to be that it's not obvious how
to deal with blanks and slashes.  I went back and looked at 987 to double
check.  It seems that blank is encoded as _ and that / is encoded as #s#
and to encode _ you use #u# .  Since slashes and underscores will be
rare, you won't see many instances of #s# in addresses.  Since blanks are
more common, you will see a fair number of underscores.  There are, of
course, escapes to cover other characters in the syntax, such as = ,
and an octal escape to cover anything unforeseen.

	Mark