Network Working Group J. Stracke, eCal Corp. INTERNET DRAFT Expires July, 2000 January 19, 2000 Message Information Data Format 1 Status of this Document This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.'' The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to francis@ecal.com or to the impp@iastate.edu discussion list. 2 Abstract This document specifies that instant messages are to be [MIME] messages. It is anticipated that this document will eventually become a paragraph or two in [IMPP-MITP]. 3 Introduction This document specifies that instant messages are to be [MIME] messages. It is anticipated that this document will eventually become a paragraph or two in [IMPP-MITP]. Section 7.1.8 of [IMPP-REQTS] specifies that the format of instant message bodies should be based on [MIME]. This document formalizes that usage. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [MUSTS]. 4 Instant message format An INSTANT MESSAGE, as defined in Section 4 of [IMPP-MODEL], MUST be a [MIME] message. Note, though, that the delivery headers (To:, From:, etc.) may not be the same as those defined in [822]; the delivery headers required (and allowed) will be defined by Stracke [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT MIDF January 19, 2000 [IMPP-MITP]. Also, [IMPP-MITP] may specify different default values for some headers and parameters. For example, to enhance internationalization, it may be specified that the default character set for text/plain will be [UTF-8] rather than us-ascii. 5 Open questions o Which [MIME] headers defined since RFCs 2045-2049 do we want to include? It is likely that all will be acceptable. o Do we want to borrow any headers from [HTTP]? For example, Content-Encoding could be very useful. 6 Internationalization Considerations This proposal builds on [MIME], and has all the same internationalization capabilities, particularly those in [MIME-I18N]. 7 IANA Considerations This proposal does not introduce any new IANA considerations. 8 Security Considerations This proposal does not introduce any new security considerations over those in [MIME]. 9 Copyright The following copyright notice is copied from RFC-2026 [Bradner, 1996], section 10.4, and describes the applicable copyright for this document. Copyright (C) The Internet Society April 5, 1998. All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assignees. Stracke [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT MIDF January 19, 2000 This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. 10 Intellectual Property The following notice is copied from RFC-2026 [Bradner, 1996], section 10.4, and describes the position of the IETF concerning intellectual property claims made against this document. The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use other technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementors or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive Director. 11 Acknowledgements The IMPP working group had agreed on MIME by the time I started participating; I'm just the one who volunteered to write it up. 12 References [IMPP-MODEL] M. Day, J. Rosenberg, "A Model for Presence and Instant Messaging". draft-ietf-impp-model-03.txt. Internet Draft, work in progress. Lotus; Bell Labs. June, 1999. [IMPP-REQTS] M. Day, S. Aggarawal, G. Mohr, J. Vincent, "Instant Messaging / Presence Protocol Requirements." draft-ietf-impp-reqts-03.txt. Internet Draft, work in progress. Lotus; Microsoft; Activerse; Arepa. June, 1999. [IMPP-MITP] Message Information Transfer Protocol. Proposed document to be produced by the IMPP working group. Stracke [Page 3] INTERNET-DRAFT MIDF January 19, 2000 [MIME] See [MIME-FORMAT], [MIME-TYPES], [MIME-I18N], [MIME-REGISTRATION], and [MIME-CONFORM]. [MIME-FORMAT] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies." RFC-2045. Innosoft, First Virtual. November, 1996. [MIME-TYPES] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types." RFC-2046. Innosoft, First Virtual. November, 1996. [MIME-I18N] K. Moore, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text." RFC-2047. University of Tennessee. November, 1996. [MIME-REGISTRATION] N. Freed, J. Klensin, J. Postel "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures." RFC-2047. Innosoft, MCI, ISI. November, 1996. [MIME-CONFORM] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Five: Conformance Criteria and Examples." RFC-2049. Innosoft, First Virtual. November, 1996. [HTTP] R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter, P. Leach, T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1." RFC-2616. UC Irvine, Compaq, W3C, MIT, Xerox, Microsoft. June, 1999. [822] D. Crocker, "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages", RFC-822. University of Delaware. August, 1982. [UTF-8] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646", RFC-2279. Alis Technologies. January 1998. [MUSTS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels," BCP 14, RFC-2119, Harvard University, March 1997. 13 Author's Address J. Stracke eCal Corp. 234 N. Columbus Blvd., 2nd Floor Philadelphia, PA 94043 francis@ecal.com Stracke [Page 4]