Subject: Quack!

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1999 14:14:50 +0000

Splashing into this debate, webbed-feet first...

I think we are looking at two kinds of duck here:

Ifax/eifax/T.37 is an e-mail based bird;  as an attempt to integrate fax
activities into e-mail, I think the "duck" here is e-mail.  Hence fax-style
cover pages can seem irrelevant.  And e-mail has some properties that mean
it can never look completely like fax-as-we-know-it.

But, if I have correctly sensed the development of the argument, Richard
has approached this from a position of trying to define a service
definition for fax that can be run over the internet (using other than
e-mail protocols).  In this case, the "duck" is fax.  I think the
interesting question here is whether a user's expectation of fax
performance is tied to the service provided, or to the (printed-image)
presentation of that service.  I have heard presentations in fax
conferences that suggest the latter, in which case service elements
implemented in metadata (headers, etc.) may perceived by users to be more
like a goose's "honk" than a "quack".  But, who knows, maybe the users will
find the "honk" to be more musical?

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
([email-masked])