Mark Fraser (mfraser@helix.net)
Mon, 24 Jan 2000 10:49:49 -0800
I didn't make my point clearly, for which I apologize.
I was not commenting on the reliability of fax, but on the dangers of
relaxing the need to report a problem. Fax lacks many of the
mechanisms to detect or evaluate the seriousness of a particular
impairment, to be sure. I also agree that users will have vastly
different interpretations of any reported problem.
That should not remove the responsibility to report any difficulty
encountered during transmission. I was reacting to the implied
suggestion that partial delivery be treated as completed delivery.
Failing a list of possible impairments and combinations of
impairments, against which we could assign a "pass/fail" parameter,
I am in favor of full reporting. / mark
ned.freed@innosoft.com wrote:
> > Either a system "takes responsibility" for delivery and notification, or it
> > does not.
>
> > You may treat personal email in a cavalier manner, but don't force its
> > failings onto FAX carriage.
>
> Mark, I don't think anyone here is treating personal email in a cavalier
> manner. I must say I also find it borderline offensive for you to imply that
> email has failing but existing FAX does not. The fact of the matter
> is that both services have their issues -- failings if you will -- that
> the new service we're building needs to address.
>
> This is why there's significant technical justification for a partial delivery
> notification. Like it or not, the range of devices and the range of formats
> people are going to use is such that partial delivery is going to be
> inevitable. In particular, it is simply not possible to constrain this service
> to a single set of universally acceptable formats. This has been tried in both
> the email and FAX worlds and has been a failure in both.
>
> The question to my mind is that given the inevitability of partial delivery
> occurring is a mechanism for making it visible to users useful. My previous
> message explained my position on this issue.
>
> > And while I personally feel that there are
> > still many dozens of bandaids needed to make email conform to some
> > minimal standard of performance, I would rather see this model be
> > fixed, rather than further compromised by relaxing the definition of
> > "delivered". Just my $0.0166 / mark
>
> This sort of comment is entirely nonconstructive. Please desist.
>
> Ned
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