Subject: Re: Envelope

From: Ian Glendinning <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 93 21:07:03 BST

> From: [email-masked] (David Walker)

> IMHO, the word "envelope" should not be used (as a noun) anywhere in
> the specification of the MPI draft. MPI does not define an envelope data
> object, so an envelope is just an unecessary abstraction.

Hmmm, maybe.  I think we definitely need some sort of collective name for
those fields in the message that are not the data, though.  Otherwise the
description of matching, in receive criteria (sect. 2.6) would be messy, for
example.  However, perhaps the connotations of containment and objectness,
which the word "envelope" carries, make it an inappropriate one to use in
this context.  People often speak of a "message header" - maybe we should
just have a header, and data, where the header contains source, destination,
tag and context fields?
   Ian
--
[email-masked]        Ian Glendinning
Tel: +44 703 593368                  Dept of Electronics and Computer Science
Fax: +44 703 593045                  University of Southampton SO9 5NH England