rfc1049.txt

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Network Working Group                                           M. Sirbu
Request for Comments:  1049                                          CMU
                                                              March 1988

           A CONTENT-TYPE HEADER FIELD FOR INTERNET MESSAGES

STATUS OF THIS MEMO

   This RFC suggests proposed additions to the Internet Mail Protocol,
   RFC-822, for the Internet community, and requests discussion and
   suggestions for improvements.  Distribution of this memo is
   unlimited.

ABSTRACT

   A standardized Content-type field allows mail reading systems to
   automatically identify the type of a structured message body and to
   process it for display accordingly.  The structured message body must
   still conform to the RFC-822 requirements concerning allowable
   characters.  A mail reading system need not take any specific action
   upon receiving a message with a valid Content-Type header field.  The
   ability to recognize this field and invoke the appropriate display
   process accordingly will, however, improve the readability of
   messages, and allow the exchange of messages containing mathematical
   symbols, or foreign language characters.

                             Table of Contents

   1. Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
   2. Problems with Structured Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3. The Content-type Header Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
        3.1. Type Values  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
        3.2. Version Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
        3.3. Resource Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
        3.4. Comment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   4. Conclusion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1. Introduction

   As defined in RFC-822, [2], an electronic mail message consists of a
   number of defined header fields, some containing structured
   information (e.g., date, addresses), and a message body consisting of
   an unstructured string of ASCII characters.

   The success of the Internet mail system has led to a desire to use
   the mail system for sending around information with a greater degree
   of structure, while remaining within the constraints imposed by the
   limited character set.  A prime example is the use of mail to send a



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RFC 1049                   Mail Content Type                  March 1988


   document with embedded TROFF formatting commands.  A more
   sophisticated example would be a message body encoded in a Page
   Description Language (PDL) such as Postscript.  In both cases, simply
   mapping the ASCII characters to the screen or printer in the usual
   fashion will not render the document image intended by the sender; an
   additional processing step is required to produce an image of the
   message text on a display device or a piece of paper.

   In both of these examples, the message body contains only the legal
   character set, but the content has a structure which produces some
   desirable result after appropriate processing by the recipient.  If a
   message header field could be used to indicate the structuring
   technique used in the message body, then a sophisticated mail system
   could use such a field to automatically invoke the appropriate
   processing of the message body.  For example, a header field which
   indicated that the message body was encoded using Postscript could be
   used to direct a mail system running under Sun Microsystem's NEWS
   window manager to process the Postscript to produce the appropriate
   page image on the screen.

   Private header fields (beginning with "X-") are already being used by
   some systems to affect such a result (e.g., the Andrew Message System
   developed at Carnegie Mellon University).  However, the widespread
   use of such techniques will require general agreement on the name and
   allowed parameter values for a header field to be used for this
   purpose.

   We propose that a new header field, "Content-type:"  be recognized as
   the standard field for indicating the structure of the message body.
   The contents of the "Content-Type:"  field are parameters which
   specify what type of structure is used in the message body.

   Note that we are not proposing that the message body contain anything
   other than ASCII characters as specified in RFC-822.  Whatever
   structuring is contained in the message body must be represented
   using only the allowed ASCII characters.  Thus, this proposal should
   have no impact on existing mailers, only on mail reading systems.

   At the same time, this restriction eliminates the use of more general
   structuring techniques such as Abstract Syntax Notation, (CCITT
   Recommendation X.409) as used in the X.400 messaging standard, which
   are octet-oriented.

   This is not the first proposal for structuring message bodies.
   RFC-767 discusses a proposed technique for structuring multi-media
   mail messages.  We are also aware that many users already employ mail
   to send TROFF, SCRIBE, TEX, Postscript or other structured
   information.  Such postprocessing as is required must be invoked



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RFC 1049                   Mail Content Type                  March 1988


   manually by the message recipient who looks at the message text
   displayed as conventional ASCII and recognizes that it is structured
   in some way that requires additional processing to be properly
   rendered.  Our proposal is designed to facilitate automatic
   processing of messages by a mail reading system.

2. Problems with Structured Messages

   Once we introduce the notion that a message body might require some
   processing other than simply painting the characters to the screen we
   raise a number of fundamental questions.  These generally arise due
   to the certainty that some receiving systems will have the facilities
   to process the received message and some will not.  The problem is
   what to do in the presence of systems with different levels of
   capability.

   First, we must recognize that the purpose of structured messages is
   to be able to send types of information, ultimately intended for
   human consumption, not expressable in plain ASCII.  Thus, there is no
   way in plain ASCII to send the italics, boldface, or greek characters
   that can be expressed in Postscript.  If some different processing is
   necessary to render these glyphs, then that is the minimum price to
   be paid in order to send them at all.

   Second, by insisting that the message body contain only ASCII, we
   insure that it will not "break" current mail reading systems which
   are not equipped to process the structure; the result on the screen
   may not be readily interpretable by the human reader, however.

   If a message sender knows that the recipient cannot process
   Postscript, he or she may prefer that the message be revised to
   eliminate the use of italics and boldface, rather than appear
   incomprehensible.  If Postscript is being used because the message
   contains passages in Greek, there may be no suitable ASCII
   equivalent, however.

   Ideally, the details of structuring the message (or not) to conform
   to the capabilities of the recipient system could be completely
   hidden from the message sender.  The distributed Internet mail system
   would somehow determine the capabilities of the recipient system, and
   convert the message automatically; or, if there was no way to send
   Greek text in ASCII, inform the sender that his message could not be
   transmitted.








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RFC 1049                   Mail Content Type                  March 1988


   In practice, this is a difficult task.  There are three possible
   approaches:

      1. Each mail system maintains a database of capabilities of
         remote systems it knows how to send to.  Such a database
         would be very difficult to keep up to date.

      2. The mail transport service negotiates with the receiving
         system as to its capabilities.  If the receiving system
         cannot support the specified content type, the mail is
         transformed into conventional ASCII before transmission.
         This would require changes to all existing SMTP
         implementations, and could not be implemented in the case
         where RFC-822 type messages are being forwarded via Bitnet or
         other networks which do not implement SMTP.

      3. An expanded directory service maintains information on mail
         processing capabilities of receiving hosts.  This eliminates
         the need for real-time negotiation with the final
         destination, but still requires direct interaction with the
         directory service.  Since directory querying is part of mail
         sending as opposed to mail composing/reading systems, this
         requires changes to existing mailers as well as a major
         change to the domain name directory service.

   We note in passing that the X.400 protocol implements approach number
   2, and that the Draft Recommendations for X.DS, the Directory
   Service, would support option 3.

   In the interest of facilitating early usage of structured messages,
   we choose not to recommend any of the three approaches described
   above at the present time.  In a forthcoming RFC we will propose a
   solution based on option 2, requiring modification to mailers to
   support negotiation over capabilities.  For the present, then, users
   would be obliged to keep their own private list of capabilities of
   recipients and to take care that they do not send Postscript, TROFF
   or other structured messages to recipients who cannot process them.
   The penalty for failure to do so will be the frustration of the
   recipient in trying to read a raw Postscript or TROFF file painted on
   his or her screen.  Some System Administrators may attempt to
   implement option 1 for the benefit of their users, but this does not
   impose a requirement for changes on any other mail system.

   We recognize that the long-term solution must require changes to
   mailers.  However, in order to begin now to standardize the header
   fields, and to facilitate experimentation, we issue the present RFC.





Sirbu                                                           [Page 4]