Entry Details: 01/01/1984

Notes/Comments:

The X.400 specifications were first published by ITU-T (then CCITT) in 1984, and were substantially revised in 1988. The X.400 architecture originated from IFIP WG 6.5, on International Computer Messaging, and was intended to be able to handle store-and-forward electronic mail, with interfaces into telex, fax, teletex and postal mail. In X.400 terminology, a User Agent (UA) is the email client which someone uses to generate a message and submit it to a Message Transfer Agent (MTA), which passes the message to other MTAs until the message reaches the destination user, or until it is converted to a service outside of X.400, such as being reformatted into a telex, fax, or is printed out and delivered via a postal service. Compared to Internet mail, the X.400 design enforces more of a logical separation between the envelope, which contains the fields manipulated by the MTAs, and the content of the message. The original content forms were named P2 and P22, and represent a business memo. These forms of content consist of a header, resembling a cover sheet on a memo, and one or more body parts. Each body part could be text or an image, such as a fax. (See Also: "Origin of Directory Naming Attributes" http://www.ldap.com/1/x400schema.shtml)

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