PE>> I have identified the hole, and have suggested SOT/EOT as a method
 PE>> of plugging it.

 ac> Is this "hole", enough of a problem to warrant such a fix
in the first
 ac> place?

Yes.  The hole is made very much apparent by complete abortions
like whenever you quote some text that has "---" in it, it gets
changed to "-+-" by some editors.  And SEEN-BY gets changed to
SEEN+BY, and "* Origin" gets changed to "+ Origin", and putting
"AREA" in the middle of a sentence may well get that whole line
made invisible.  These things are the manifestation of an
abortion.  You actually have to look under the surface to find
out what it is that caused these things to happen in the first
place.  The reason is that user-text is not clearly separated
from control lines, and too many people go and have a look
inside user-text looking for control lines.

 PE>> And Rod hasn't been saying that he wants to write a new
 PE>> protocol, he's been saying all along that if you're going
 PE>> to do that, you should justify why you can't use X.400,

 ac> Funny.  If that's the case, why are you telling me?

Probably because you didn't understand him.  I can quote a bit
of what he said so that you can see that he did indeed say it,
it's just that you have to be versatile in Rodspeak...
*************************************************************
Ä PUBLIC_DOMAIN (3:711/934.9) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ PUBLIC_DOMAIN Ä
 Msg  : 1823 of 1971 + 1834                                                     
 From : Rod Speed                           3:711/934.2     Tue 24 Jan 95 11:14 
 To   : Bob Lawrence                                        Wed 25 Jan 95 08:00 
 Subj : password              1/2                                               
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
ever getting everyone switching to it. And if you are going to make
a complete step away from the current one, you first have to show
that one of the true standards like X.400 isnt usable. No point in
generating a whole new one if it is.
************************************************************

 ac> (Are Paul Edwards and Rod Speed the same person? :-))

HEY!  I heard that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 ac> Why don't you use X.400?

A couple of reasons:

1. Dave Hatch sends me mail packets conforming to FTS-*, not
X.400.

2. I haven't seen an X.400 summary that would make a subset of
the standard easily implemented for our network.

 PE>> since someone has already spent a lot of effort doing
 PE>> just that.

 ac> Who?

ISO developed the X. protocols I believe.  If it wasn't them,
it might have been the ITU.  Far more respectable organizations
than the Mark Kimes brigade, anyway.  :-)

 PE>> Which is something I also agree with, why do we need
 PE>> 20 million different Type-3 proposals when X.400 is available?

 ac> Available?  Where?  In what form?  What is X.400?  Where is the FSC
 ac> document?
 
It is available from Standards Australia, in your local capital
city, in printed form.  It is an electronic mail standard, that
took years to develop.  It has not been summarized into an FSC
document. 

 ac> These are the reasons, Paul.  No-one knows what this
"X.400" is.  Not even
 ac> me.
 
So rather than waste time developing a new Type-3 standard,
someone could better spend their time reading X.400 and
writing a summary. 

 PE>> I still reckon what we need is for someone to create a
 PE>> Type-3 proposal based on a subset of X.400 that isn't
 PE>> too difficult to implement.

 ac> Perhaps you could try and spread the word about the advantages and
 ac> disadvantages of X.400.

I haven't read it myself.  But I would read it before developing
a Type-3 proposal.

 PE>> BTW, when can I hope to see SOT/EOT being generated from
 PE>> your system?  :-)

 ac> This message has a SOT/EOT, for your pure enjoyment and enlightenment.
 ac> Future messages won't have SOT/EOT, not until I find an offline reader
 ac> that supports it.

gensmsg does.  I'll post it in my next message.

 PE>> Actually, if Rod wasn't such a stick-in-the-mud SOT/EOT would
 PE>> rapidly take off, because he would be generating them with PQWK!

 ac> Well, there you go.  Follow the leader - what a horrid thought.  What
 ac> about the rest of the world?

 ac> Anyone for dictatorship?

You've probably seen that he's such a stick-in-the-mud that even
when I go and make that small change to the exact version of 
PQWK that he is using he decides that that is too risky!!!
BFN.  Paul.
@EOT:

--- Mksmsg