[no subject]

At 06:08 PM 5/5/96 GMT, Carl Hage wrote:
>dave_d@systrends.com (Dave Darnell) writes:
>
>: If you have S/MIME in Templar and Harbinger has it  -- your two
>: implementations must be talking to each other. Is this true?
>
>No, there is more to interoperability than an encryption algorithm.
>The way the X12 data is packaged (e.g. MIME or plain) before and
>after encryption and the way receipts are handled must be compatible.
>Of course, close isn't good enough when it comes to computers.

Gee, recognizing that they got started before this effort, do you suppose if
they'd done something dumb, like used the PGP package, they would have been
interoperable? Sorry folks, just a little early morning sarcasm :)

A serious question about interoperability follows.

At 10:23 AM 5/3/96, Steve Botts wrote:

>S/MIME is no more vaporware than X12 is vaporware.  Both are specifications
that describe how to do something.  There are 
>toolkits to implement S/MIME available from RSA, Northern Telecom,
>& COST.   At Premenos we used the BSAFE toolkit from RSA to 
>implement S/MIME in Templar.  I believe Harbinger is using the 
>ENTRUST toolkit from Nortel in their implementation of S/MIME.

But I'm curious, are these toolkits absolutely compatible. If the packaging
of the transaction and the rest of the miscellania is in synch between two
implementations that rely on different toolkits, will the two
implementations be interoperable?

This question is not Tom being sarcastic. Steve is arguing that S/MIME is
not vaporware and legitimately points to three toolkits. My question is: Is
the pseudo-standard stable? One way to tell is if three different tool kits
implement the pseudo-standard the same way.

Best to all,
Tom

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