From owner-majordomo@ebt.com Fri Dec 15 17:39:14 1995 Return-Path: Received: from ebt-inc.ebt.com by utafll.uta.edu (4.1/25-eef) id AA28317; Fri, 15 Dec 95 17:39:06 CST Received: from cja00010.slip.digex.net (cja00010.slip.digex.net [204.91.3.10]) by ebt-inc.ebt.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id PAA16021 for ; Fri, 15 Dec 1995 15:37:30 -0500 Received: from cja00010.slip.digex.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cja00010.slip.digex.net (8.6.11/8.6.9) with ESMTP id PAA00204; Fri, 15 Dec 1995 15:38:51 -0500 Message-Id: <199512152038.PAA00204@cja00010.slip.digex.net> To: MIME/SGML Folks , minutes@cnri.reston.va.us Cc: Ed Levinson Subject: mimesgml WG Dallas Minutes Organization: Accurate Information Systems, Inc. X-Org-Addr: 2 Industrial Way X-Org-Addr: Eatontown, NJ 08840 X-Org-Misc: 1.908.389.5550 (phone) 1.908.389.5556 (fax) X-Mailer: MH 6.8 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1995 15:38:50 -0500 From: Ed Levinson Status: R mimesgml working group minutes 4 December 1995 19:30 - 22:00 Ed Levinson, chair Glenn Vanderburg, secretary - Introductions - Overview of Status - The types, multipart/related, and access-cid drafts have all been sent to the RFC editors and are awaiting publication as experimental RFCs. - Don Stinchfield has informally circulated a new draft of the exchange proposal. - Two different proposals are currently being advanced; one is the "encapsulation" proposal (draft-ietf-mimesgml-encap-02.txt), by Ed Levinson, and the "exchange" proposal (draft-ietf-mimesgml-exch-00.txt), by Don Stinchfield. The exchange proposal was described initially as being well-suited for the Web, but also useful for email. The encapsulation proposal was explicitly designed for email. Both proposals are intended by their proponents for the standards track, but no wg consensus currently exists. John Klensin observed that the IESG would not accept two different, non-interoperable specs as proposed standards unless there were a clear explanation of different circumstances in which to use the different mechanisms, and working group consensus behind that explanation. Failing consensus on either a single proposal or such an explanation of use, the only alternative would be to advance both proposals as experimental RFCs. - There was some discussion of the impact of having working code for one or the other of the proposals. Bill Smith indicated that EBT plans to implement the exchange proposal in an http-based system, and that James Clark may be doing an independent implementation. Mark Joseph of Wollongong said that his company has an implemenation of the encapsulation proposal in a mail environment. John Klensin pointed out two process issues: considering that the group charter specifies email, an http-based implementation doesn't count; and in the case of specifications which involve a client/server relationship, two independent, interoperable implemenations are required. - The point was raised that multipart/related is an important development in its own right, and should not be held to experimental because of disagreement on some dependent proposals. There was general agreement, and John Klensin pointed out that a big reason for the experimental status of multipart/related is its overlap with work done by other working groups, such as the Content-Disposition header. He also pointed out that multipart, especially with regard to the handling of unrecognized subtypes, is perceived to be one of the more fragile parts of MIME, so any new multipart subtype which was proposed as a standard would be given intense scrutiny by MIME experts, and perhaps operational experience as an experimental specification would be useful. - Discussion of the working group scope - There was a proposal to extend the charter to cover Web-based interchange, in addition to email. There was general consensus that Web interchange is also desired, but not that it should be incorporated into this working group's charter at this time. John Klensin advanced several arguments that addressing the Web issue at this point would cause process problems and introduce further delay. John also requested a volunteer to co-chair the WG, someone not associated with either proposal. No one volunteered. - Discussion of two competing proposals - There was a request for a description of the relative advantages of each proposal. A simple description turned out to be difficult. Discussion centered on requirements for various parts of the system to parse the SGML data, and requirements for rewriting parts of the document for interchange (and the effect of such rewriting on message integrity checks). This discussion ended with very little agreement, except on the point that implementation of the encapsulation proposal may prove difficult with some MIME systems which do not convey arbitrary MIME entity headers to viewers or helper applications. - Milestones - Two milestones were agreed upon: - Don Stinchfield will formally circulate a new draft of the exchange proposal by the end of the year. - By the time of the next meeting in March, the group should achieve agreement on how to advance one or both of the proposals.