🚀 go-pugleaf

 >Fascinating. How is it that you came to the conclusions (1) ASN.1 makes
 >a great deal of sense when used to hold multi-media documenst and (2)
 >[electronic mail] doesn't need to parsed in real-time. I can name at
 >least one project that was canceled because the ASN.1 requirement of ODA
 >is such a pain. (We were certainly never thrilled by it for ODA.)

Mark,

1. i wouldnt claim ASN.1 ever made *much* sense

2. the PP X.400 system has channels to convert inbound ODIF into
locally real time readable formats (e.g. slate) - MTAs do not need to
parse e-mail in real time (by definition a spooled communication) .
(actually, you parse ASN.1 offline, and generate *concrete* syntax
parsers, that can easily run in real time - a recent survey we did
uncovered at least 9 such parser/generators).

however, if digital multi-medi conferencing were widely available, 
whatever presentation standard it used
would clearly take the absurd load off MTAs when used for
e-mail as well

actually, the position i take is that TCP/IP got it right for end to
end and interconnection for networks of the 70s and 80s, OSI got it right 
for 19th century application support, and no-one has it right for the next 
decade yet...
and that means 
we've only got a week to develop and field transaction protocols, decent 
XDRs, congestion proof networks, and usable applications that dont take a
minimum of a Sun 4/330 to run as fast as people (like our X.500 and
X.400 implementations)

- then we can start
making nice sounds about integrated video/voice/data in an Internet
without sounding like infernal optimists 

(hopefully some secret
consortium is about to unleash such a system for free so there's a
nice de-facto solution just like NFS and X got done, but this time
they'll repair some of the mistakes [and write it all in Algol
68:-)])

so thats my message for a happy winter solstice...

cheers

 jon