🚀 go-pugleaf

Subject: Re: Multi-media mail standards; Forw: Use of ODA in the Internet
Sender: mmm-people-request@venera.isi.edu
To: mmm-people@venera.isi.edu

> That list of standards efforts in multimedia was excellent, but there is a
> body of work that it didn't cover.  I mean the current efforts to standardize
> "Object Management", including tangible media objects, that are happening in
> the microcomputer world.  It seems very likely that this work will
have a major
> effect on the form of any real working standard, as microcomputers are by far
> the most likely terminals for any MM document or mail system.

>  I think that a standard that required a computer costing over $1000
(today's money)
> is likely to lose ground, since there are tens of millions of PCs,
Macs, etc., out there.

>  . . .

> DEBATE ?

>I would like to start a debate going on the advantages/disadvantages of this
> approach to multimedia documents.

Well, you asked for it ...

I must admit to being quite confused about the relationship of the kinds
of standards/architectures you discussed in your message & a mm mail
document standard.

It is clear that in order to be usable as a mail standard, a document
architecture must have a specified interchange format (also known as a
datastream).  I.e., the arch must specify the actual bits that are to be
placed into the message to represent the document.

Now, if I understand the standards you have described (and, I may not
understand them correctly), they are descriptions of application program
interfaces that allow executing processes to manipulate mm objects. 
This is obviously an important kind of standard, but I fail to see how
one of these standards can be said to be a "mmm document standard".  To
be useful, one would have to define an interchange format for each
standard.  Now, this might be possible for any one of these standards,
but given the original impetus for them (application program tool
kits/standards), I'm not sure they lend themselves to mail standards.

To stretch the analogy a little, I could claim that X is a graphics mail
standard, since X allows applications to manipulate graphical objects. 
But, I hope no one would make this claim.

Am I way off base here?  Or, are you suggesting that we start with (one
of) these standards & come up with an appropriate interchange format for
them.

JR