[Please feel free to redistribute this message as appropriate.]
I am happy to announce the availability of a new draft of RFC-XXXX, the
(soon-to-be) proposed new standard for multipart, multimedia Internet
messages. The new draft will be available soon as an Internet Draft.
Those who are just chomping at the bit to read it can obtain it sooner
by anonymous ftp from thumper.bellcore.com. There, you'll find it in
the directory "pub/nsb" under the name "BodyFormats.ps" for the
PostScript version and "BodyFormats.txt" for the ASCII text version.
People who can't reach thumper.bellcore.com via ftp AND who can't reach
any of the Internet Draft distribution sites may send me personal mail
to request a copy of the document. PLEASE SPECIFY A PREFERENCE FOR
TEXT OR POSTSCRIPT.
Discussion of this document will take place on the IETF-822 mailing
list. To join that list, send mail to
IETF-822-REQUEST(_at_)DIMACS(_dot_)RUTGERS(_dot_)EDU(_dot_) Final revisions of
this document
and elevation to Proposed Standard status will take place (with luck) at
the IETF meeting in Santa Fe in November.
Ned and I are very grateful to all the many people who have offered
their comments and suggestions on the previous drafts. With this draft,
I hope we can all try to work together to achieve closure by Santa Fe,
so that we may successfully advance this document to Proposed Standard
status.
If you are not familiar with the previous draft of this document, you
may safely skip the rest of this message.
SIGNIFICANT CHANGES FROM JUNE DRAFT:
Note: This list does not include changes of the wording of the draft,
no matter how major. This is because such changes are extremely
extensive. Instead, it is a list of the changes that might actually
have an effect on implementors, assuming a correct understanding of both
the previous draft and the current one. I think this list is complete,
and apologize if I am wrong.
Encoding changes: 78-char limit on quoted-printable line
lengths has been reduced to 76. Quoted-printable rule #1 is
now *optional* for TAB characters, which are now covered by
rule #4. Generally tightened requirement for using
Content-Transfer-Encoding: this field is now always
required for 8-bit or binary data.
Content-type message changes: The PEM subtype is deleted,
punting the issue to the PEM group. The message/partial
syntax has been altered to make the number-of-parts optional
in all but the last part. The semantics of message/partial
have been subtly altered to make it "transparent".
New REQUIRED header field: Body-Version. See Section 3, all new.
Major changes to multipart: The version (1-s, 1-p) is gone,
in favor of Body-Version. A new "parallel" subtype picks up
the slack. More important, a new subtype, "alternative", is
defined, and support for this subtype is now REQUIRED in the
Conformance appendix. The semantics of the
"multipart/digest" subtype have been changed for better
conformance with RFC 934.
New OPTIONAL header field: Content-charset. See Section
5.3, also new.
Text-plus/Richtext additions: paragraph, signature,
indentright, outdent, outdentright, mnemonic, samepage, and
np (new page). New recommended TAB usage.
Mandatory registration: Registration of new subtypes with
IANA is now mandatory.
Increased Formalism: There's a lot more BNF, and people
should check to make sure it's right. For convenience, it
is all now collected in Appendix F.
Image, Audio, and Video: Added a few subtypes and
clarifications to each of these types. The audio subytpes
are controversial, and Marshall Rose may be presenting an
alternative to the ietf-822 list.
Application: Added a new "oda" subtype.
Enjoy the new document! -- Nathaniel