🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <UamjK4S0M2YtM5IlAl@thumper.bellcore.com> nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) writes:
>I think that it is evident that eventually some kind of format standard
>for multimedia mail will have to be adopted.  I also think that *none*
>of the current conceivable contenders are appropriate, and that some
>basic research on document representation technology still needs to be
>done.  In my opinion, a standard would be premature.
>


I agree with the conclusion that a standard would be premature, and
I'll go one better: I think [with apologies to my friends] that the
exchange format is the wrong place invest effort.  My biggest reason
for saying this is that I don't believe there exists any real
agreement about what `multimedia mail' really is.  Consequently there
can be no agreement about what infomration has to be included in a mm
mail message.

Exchange formats seem to me to be only a very small piece of a much
larger multimedia question.  The question is posed as new technologies
come on line: new interaction techniques, audio and visual processing,
new database technologies etc.  As I see it, the unanswered question
is how all these new parts interact and can be put together.  Talk
about multimedia documents, and consequently multimedia mail, falls
right into the middle of these issues.

Because the functionality of multimedia mail is unknown, an exchange
format standard at this point faces two choices:

	1. Choose a probably anemic notion of mm functionality and
	   hold back the state of the practice for the life of the
	   standard.

	2. Write the standard as a language in which the functional
	   characteristics of the mail can be described.  Hope that
	   your language matches the capabilities of emerging mm 
	   software.

The second is the better approach, but better still would be to bag
the exchange format altogether and concetrate directly on mm question
itself.

-t

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