[April 27, 2001] "The MessageML Forum is an independent, non-profit industry association founded to develop and promote MessageML, the new open standard for sending XML messages to individuals. MessageML Forum membership will be comprised of innovative companies across multiple industries that have an interest in promoting advanced messaging, including software firms, corporate senders of messages, communications service providers, technology integrators, independent developers, and communications device manufacturers. The MessageML Forum is supported and facilitated by the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO), a leader in technology standards development."
"The MessageML SmartMessage uses XML to control processing, formatting, organization and delivery of electronic messages, resulting in the creation of a different, more intelligent kind of message....The MessageML Forum is an independent, not- for-profit industry association pioneering the next generation electronic message, called the MessageML 'SmartMessage.' The mission of the forum is to promote the adoption and further the development of this new open, XML-based messaging standard. The SmartMessage specification is the convergence of email with Internet and XML technologies, providing corporations with a new, rich way to electronically communicate with their customers, while maintaining compatibility with the existing world-wide email network."
From the FAQ document: "The goals of the MessageML Forum are to (1) develop and promote a new, open SmartMessaging email standard, (2) build a cross-industry, open environment where industry input drives the specification progress, and (3) support the development of MessageML-based applications and services. MessageML compliments all task-oriented XML dialects [SynchML, VoiceXML, NewsML] in that it can make them come alive and dynamically move out of custom software solutions, and instead move from person-to-person or company-to-person as a "Payload" of a SmartMessage. The idea for MessageML spawned from the intellectual property and products developed by Centerpost Corporation. Centerpost, in helping corporations communicate with their customers with XML, realized the potential of a ubiquitous standard that could operate seamlessly between organizations and individuals, and thus helped found MessageML to attain this goal."
From the Version 0.9g specification: The MessageML specification is a proposed standard for a new style of electronic messaging. It provides a design where message content drives the decision process. This means that even before a user reads a message, it has been prioritized and routed to a pre-defined communications device or application. The sender focuses on the content and MessageML provides the constructs to tag the content and properly transform it into a viewable format for delivery to the target communications device. MessageML is based upon eXtensible Markup Language (XML)... A SmartMessage is an electronic message that provides a single, standard envelope to deliver its content to a host of communications devices and applications, referred to in this document as endpoints. These endpoints include mobile phones with messaging capability, wireless PDAs, pagers, fax machines, PC e-mail inboxes, instant messaging applications, and standard telephones. Thus, a SmartMessage sent to a pager would look the same as a SmartMessage sent as an e-mail in HTML format. The MessageML architecture separates the content from the presentation, and allows the sender to define how its message content should be displayed to the user on these various endpoints. A SmartMessage also contains a robust set of self-descriptive attributes or meta data about its content. By examining this meta data, a process or recipient can determine how the message should be handled, for example, how the message should be prioritized, handles and delivered. MessageML also incorporates message stylesheets which are applied to the message content to create communication device specific message formats. Again, by separating the content from the presentation a SmartMessage can transform it's contents to any other presentation format. This allows MessageML to interoperate and leverage other proprietary and XML-based communications formats. For example, a SmartMessage could be sent to a WAP-enabled phone by transforming its contents to WML or a speech recognition dialog could be initiated over a telephone by transforming a SmartMessage into a VoiceXML document. The end result is that it becomes easier for both the SmartMessage service provider and their recipients to manage, receive, route, and interact with electronic messages. This document describes the MessageML architecture, format definitions and stylesheets, and discusses implementation samples. It also provides the necessary information to develop MessageML based applications and services."
On XML (Instant) Messaging, see [1] Common Profile for Instant Messaging (CPIM); [2] Jabber XML Protocol; [3] WAP Wireless Markup Language Specification; [4] MessageML; [5] XML Messaging Specification (XMSG); [6] Wireless Village Initiative.
References:
- MessageML web site
- MessageML Forum description
- "How to Become an Informant." - MessageML white paper. "This whitepaper gives step-by-step instructions on how to use the MessageML SmartMessage specification to be a sender of XML SmartMessages."
- MessageML architecture
- MessageML FAQ document, [cache]
- MessageML: The Next Generation of Electronic Messaging. SmartMessage Specification. Preliminary DRAFT Version 0.9g. 12/12/2000. 74 pages. Contacts: (1) Jonathan Zuck Chairman, MessageML Forum, jzuck@messageml.org; (2) Craig Goren CTO, Centerpost Corporation, cgoren@mail.centerpost.com. [cache]
- MessageML SmartMessage Schema
- MessageML news
- Centerpost Corporation
- Announcement: "MessageML Forum to Develop and Promote Next Generation Standard for Electronic Messaging. XML-based standard adds intelligence to electronic messaging." September 26, 2000. [cache]
