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From: jhm+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jim Morris)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Networks Considered Harmful - For Electronic Mail
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Date: 27 Sep 89 16:20:59 GMT
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 416, message 1 of 6

I think John's message was very important -- a sort of wake-up call for
the computer community.

> Excerpts from internet.telecom: 18-Aug-89 Networks Considered Harmful..
> John McCarthy@sail.stanf (9146)

> However, unless email is freed from dependence on the networks, I predict it
> will be supplanted by telefax for most uses in spite of its many  advantages
> over telefax.

I believe email will be supplanted by FAX -- period. We will eventually
end up with a hybrid, but it will be achieved by the FAX business
assimilating all the knowledge we have about email.

> These advantages include the fact that information is
> transmitted more cheaply as character streams than as images.
> Group IV compression brings the image vs. ASCII ratio down to about 5.

> Multiple addressees are readily accommodated.

FAX store and forward services like MCI will provide this.

>  Moreover, messages transmitted as character streams can be readily
> filed, searched, edited and used by computer programs.

OCR can work for the searching part.  99% character recognition rates
are common. There are already products available that scan, recognize,
and index documents for you. The key idea is that the image is saved
too, so there is no danger of the  1% missed characters causing problems
other than missed retrieval.

As for editing, very often one wants only to annotate another document.
This can be done on the image. If one really wants to edit a document,
OCR plus some hand massaging may suffice.

> The reason why telefax will supplant email unless email is separated
> from special networks is that telefax works by using the existing
> telephone network directly.

Yes!!!

> Fax has another advantage that needs to be matched and can be
> overmatched.  Since fax transmits images, fully formatted documents can
> be transmitted.  However, this loses the ability to edit the document.
> This can be beaten by email, provided there arises a widely used standard
> for representing documents that preserves editability.

This is a very big proviso. There is great chaos in this area right now.
The standard proposed by CCITT, called Office Document Architecture
(ODA), is getting very little support in the US where the DoD seems to
be promoting SGML and the commercial document editor vendors are
promoting their own proprietary standards. MicroSoft's Rich Text Format
(RTF)  seems most promising since it is used by more than one document
processor. Another hope is that a single vendor, e.g. DEC with it's
ODA-related DDIF and DECWrite (=Framemaker),  will become the market
leader and establish a de facto standard, as Lotus did for spread sheets.

A much more likely development is that PostScript becomes the exchange
standard. It is there. All document processors will produce it. It looks
a little nicer than FAX, and there is at least a fighting chance that
one can translate it back into a particular document processor's
internal format.

Another advantage of FAX you failed to emphasize is simply that it deals
with pictures effortlessly. Even if you and I have precisely the same
computing equipment and are on the ArpaNet, the fastest way for me to
get a picture to you is FAX. This is true even if the picture is hand
drawn -- drawing it on paper is faster than any drawing editor I've ever
used.

> Fortunately, there is free enterprise. Therefore, the most likely way
> of getting direct electronic mail is for some company to offer a piece of
> hardware as an electronic mail terminal including the facilities for
> connecting to the current variety of local area networks (LANs). The most
> likely way for this to be accomplished is for the makers of fax machines
> to offer ASCII service as well.

An AppleFAX modem will already do this for Apple PICT files. I would
like to see Adobe do the same for PostScript files.

> This will obviate the growing practice of some users of fax
> of printing out their messages in an OCR font, transmitting them by fax,
> whereupon the receiver scans them with an OCR scanner to get them back
> into computer form.

Why should this practice be obviated? Why not work at making OCR more
effective? In a race between clever computer hackers trying to make OCR
better and institutional politicians trying to straighten out the
standards who do you think will win? Which would you rather be?

Jim.Morris@andrew.cmu.edu
412 268-2574
FAX: 412 681-2066

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