🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Jul22.123110.1198@tolerant.com> tron@tolsoft.UUCP (Ron Karr,,439,) writes:
>Just because a computer is going to process an address doesn't mean that
>the address should suddenly become more complicated.  There is a great
>deal of both versatility AND compactness in the
>
>	local-part@domain

Addresses like this are OK for computer-literate email users, but ordinary
people should be able to type addresses similar to the ones they use on
ordinary correspondence.

Given current email addressing technology, how would you send email to the
VP of Marketing of Thinking Machines Corporation, not knowing his name,
login name, nor the domain name of our computer?  RFC-822 addresses are
fine for putting on business cards, but they're hard to generate without
being told.

>But some things that you certainly get that is more difficult to get with
>the X.400 addresses that I have seen are:
>
>    o	the ability to remember an address, because it is simple

But not figure them out without asking someone.  Also, I'm not sure my
mother would consider addresses of the form "user@frobitz.athena.mit.edu"
easy to remember (I had a hard time teaching her how to use MacWrite).

>    o	the ability to store large number of addresses in a compact and
>	readable format

No argument there.  The compact form isn't very readable and the readable
form isn't very compact.

>    o	the ability to tell somebody a concise address over, say, a
>	voice telephone connection to another human being.

X.400 permits the sender to specify as many of the recipient's attributes
as he knows and wants to include.  If you know the name of the computer and
the recipient's login name (or mail alias) you can specify this.  In fact,
I believe most of the X.400 systems in production use only support such
addresses, since the directory services are not available yet on a large
scale.  The abbreviated syntax would be something like
"USER=local-part/DOMAIN=domain".  

So, when you're putting an address on a business card or telling them over
the phone you can give them the minimally sufficent set of attributes they
need.

>But realistically, I don't want to be required to use a prompting or
>windowing interface just to be able to enter E-mail addresses.  I want
>to be able to type them, perhaps even in large numbers, on my command
>line.

Agreed.  But we shouldn't preclude such interfaces, either, since they are
appropriate for many users.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar