Communicating in the technical office: The Technical and Office Protocols specification, released in November, will be tempered in the fires of realistic applications

The lack of international standard communication protocols for computers and other programmable equipment leaves buyers between the proverbial rock and hard place. They can buy proprietary systems from a single supplier and get instantaneous communications compatibility, but they will almost certainly face interconnection problems later if they add equipment from other suppliers. Or they can buy from several suppliers initially to get the systems that perform the best and cost the least, but they will have to purchase expensive custom interfaces to connect the different systems.