No Standards

March 1997 / Inbox / No Standards

Regarding "New Software: Dead or Alive?" (December Inbox), there are well-defined standards for mailing, such as RFC-822 and x.400, which are ignored by even the likes of Microsoft. Just sending plain text messages between systems can cause problems when a mailer uses proprietary codes for end-of-line breaks or strings an entire paragraph of text together as one continuous line. Many mail systems can't handle that. And why should they? Such messages cl early bend, if not break, the rules. So what hope for schedulers and the like working internationally? None while the major players dither over compatibility. The problem is that it is in their own interests to be proprietary.
Derek Grainge
Systems Manager, Wellington College
Crowthorne, U.K.

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Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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