Folks,
The next meeting of the Internet Message Format Extensions working
group will be Monday, November 18th at the IETF Plenary meeting in
Santa Fe. Logistics information for this meeting has been mailed to
the IETF mailing list. If for some reason you are not on that list
and need information, please contact Megan Davies
<mdavies(_at_)nri(_dot_)reston(_dot_)va(_dot_)us>.
This meeting will hopefully be the wrap up of RFCXXXX, the Internet
Message Bodies document. This document is intended to become a
proposed standard after the final edits are made following this
meeting. It is intended that all major issues be nailed down before
the meeting.
The working group will consider proposals for extended character set
usage in the message headers at this meeting AFTER the RFCXXXX editing
is finished. It is my intention to reach closure on an initial
approach to this problem. Ideally the working group will reach
consensus, (Both at the meeting and by email following the meeting).
If this is the case it is possible that the header standard could be
published in tandem with the message bodies document.
I oppose the merging of the two documents. It is my goal, however,
that the message bodies and message headers documents will be
considered a set, with consistent semantics. The message headers
document may reference the message bodies documents, but at this stage
not vice-versa. If this is necessary, the two documents can be
further harmonized at the draft standard stage, and published
simultaniously as a two document set.
Again:
Agenda
1) Finish the Message Bodies document <draft-ietf-822ext-messagebodies-01>
This will include a page by page walk through of the document.
Please bring a marked up copy of the latest. If any showstoppers are
uncovered, they will be resolved at the meeting. NOTE: the document
will be submitted as a proposed standard. If further experience shows
flaws in the current specification, this document will be reopened
again in 6 months prior to it's elevation to Draft Standard.
2) Choose a Message Header mechanism for sending international
character sets.
Several proposals have been made, and hopefully one will
become the "favorite" of the working group before the meeting. If
this fortunate event were to ocure, the remainder of the working
group time will be devoted to working out details of the
specification.
Greg Vaudreuil
Internet Message Format Extensions WG Chair