Subject: Fwd: First try at a charter for MAILCAP

From: James Rafferty <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 11:38:14 -0500

Folks, 

The "mailcap" charter discussions have started.   

This work is likely to be of interest to the Fax WG, since it is targeted
toward providing a mechanism for accessing capabilities lists for a URL, such
as a Mailto: address.   

A copy of the first charter draft is attached.   

I encourage interested members from the Fax WG to sign up for the mailcap
mailing list and join in the fun.   This work is likely to spawn some parallel
activities in our WG, to match up the emerging protocol work with our fax
schema needs going forward.   

The Mailing list is
<[email-masked]>; to subscribe, send to <[email-masked]>
with SUBSCRIBE in the body.).

Regards, 

James

>Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 00:35:24 -0800 (PST)
>From: Ned Freed <[email-masked]>
>Subject: First try at a charter for MAILCAP
>To: [email-masked]
>List-Unsubscribe:
<<mailto:[email-masked]%3FSubject=unsubscribe>mailto:mailcap-req
[email-masked]?Subject=unsubscribe>
>
>               Messaging Capabilities Discovery Working Group
>                                  (MAILCAP)
>
>Chairs: Ned Freed and Jim Galvin
>
>Abstract:
>
>A variety of resource identifiers have been widely deployed on the
Internet as
>a means of identifying various resources, services, and destinations.
However,
>a means of attaching a set of attributes or characteristics to a given
>identifier has not been specified and deployed.
>
>A particularly important resolution service of this general type is one
which,
>when given a mail address identifying a particular mail recipient, will
return
>a series of attributes describing the capabilities of that recipient. This
>differs from a directory service in that no searching or other advanced query
>operations are involved.
>
>The goal of this working group is to define a general resolution service that
>will translate resource identifiers to lists attributes. At a minimum the
>service must be capable of addressing the mail capabilities problem described
>above, but ideally the service should also handle more general capability and
>characteristics discovery.
>
>Any service developed by this working group must fulfill the following
>requirements:
>
>(0) It must be highly scalable, as the intent is to deploy it very widely.
>
>(1) Protocol and server overhead must be very low, as some applications of
>    such a service will make very heavy use of it.
>
>(2) Identifiers input to this service must be formatted as Uniform Resource
>    Identifiers (URIs). Note that mail addresses can be presented as mailto:
>    URIs to meet this requirement.
>
>(3) Facilities to support inheritance within the attribute store will
>    be essential, as the number of identifiers may be very large.
>
>(4) Existing protocols will be profiled for use as part of this service
>    whenever possible rather than developing new protocols. In particular:
>
>    (a) The DNS must be used as the first step in this service, at least
>        for any URI which contains a DNS domain. This is because the DNS
>        is already properly delegated.
>    (b) Existing DNS record types such as SRV and NAPTR will be
>        used when feasible, to ease deployment.
>    (c) A lightweight query protocol may be defined by this working group
>        if no existing protocol proves to be suitable.
>    (d) An existing administrative model and maintenance protocol will be
>        specified if at all possible. Possible candidates for this include
>        ACAP and LDAPv3. The protocol and security model by which a user can
>        update his or her own attributes must be covered. 
>
>(5) Specification of the attributes needed by applications of this service is
>    outside of the scope of this working group. Note, however, that some
>    discussion of the sorts of attributes such a service needs to be
>    able to store may be appropriate. In particular, the means to extend
>    the set of attributes must be specifies.
>
>Goals:
>
>  Mar 99 Hold first meeting
>
>  xxx yy Submit Internet-Draft specifying service requirements and design
>         goals
>
>  xxx yy Submit Internet-Draft specifying service
> 
*------------------------------------------------*
James Rafferty			
President, Human Communications LLC	
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