Subject: Minutes from December Internet Fax meeting

From: James Rafferty <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 10:48:06 -0500

Folks, 

Attached are the draft minutes from the December Internet fax meeting, for 
which our scribe Graham Klyne did his usual fine job.   

If there are any corrections, please post to the list ASAP, since the
submission
deadline is Wed Jan 6th.   I will take comments/corrections up until the 
end of day Tuesday.   

If there are any comments on the results as portrayed in the minutes, please
start up separate threads to discuss these.   

Regards, 

James Rafferty 
Chair, Internet Fax working group

DRAFT minutes follow:   

Minutes - Internet Fax WG Meeting 

Date:  December 10, 1998

Chair:  James Rafferty

Reported by:  Graham Klyne

The agenda as presented below was accepted.   

- Agenda bash 
- Planned ITU reference to RFCs 
- Internet drafts review 
- Other drafts 
- Review of charter update 
- Interworking update 
- Fax over IPP status

- Planned ITU reference to RFCs
 
The joint work on Internet Fax  has helped to create a more practical 
working relationship between ITU/IETF.   In particular, the ITU has again
agreed to reference IETF 
RFCs to define the "Full Mode" of  T.37.  (see slides)

ISOC/IETF have been requested to provide completed documents and final 
RFC numbers to the ITU-T as soon as possible.  The next ITU meeting is 
in late March/early April 1999 (approval meeting is April 1).
Per rapporteur Herman Silbiger, the documents need to be circulated 
and reviewed in ITU well before the next ITU meeting. 
Ideally, the final drafts/RFCs need to be ready by Jan 24 and then 
submitted as contributions for ITU member review.  

- Internet drafts review

The "-Goals-" draft has been sent to IESG review for publication as an
informational RFC.  The "-eifax-" draft is very stable at rev -11.  
The reporting extensions draft is limited to sending capabilities via 
MDN/DSN, using conneg syntax with usage indicated by 
"-fax-feature-schema-". The WG also anticipates future mechanisms from
 mailcap.  The plan is to submit these documents to IESG for standards 
track consideration as soon as feature schema is done. Submission will 
be coordinated with the 'conneg' WG submission. The relevant 'conneg' 
drafts are -reg-, -syntax- and -media-features-.

-- Fax feature schema

Graham Klyne reviewed the status of this draft.   Most of it is now 
stable.   The last set of work has been on handling of color.   
The conclusion of this review on color has been as follows:   
There is a series of features which can be used to progressively 
refine the color capabilities;  In the fax feature draft, there are 
additional refinements that go beyond that which is specified in the 
CONNEG media features document.    

This is the first application of the Conneg framework;   Authors 
Klyne and McIntyre believe they now have a reasonable balance between 
broad color capabilities and full color matching.   

There is a new draft which incorporates these features that will be 
issued as soon as the ID directory opens up.   In the meantime, it will
 be posted to the WG web site.  The WG Last Call will be extended to 
allow for sufficient review time of the latest draft.  

Concerning an IESG last call once the documents are submitted, this is
 nominally 2 weeks, but  a holiday period is approaching and one of the
 ADs is mostly  unavailable for the rest of the year. The chair will 
try to ensure some review in this time period once the documents have 
been submitted to the IESG.

--- Full addressing
The status of this document was presented by Claudio Allocchio: 
[[[see slides]]]
The PINT WG requsted additional dialtone/wait-for-dialtone characters 
in dialing string, which are addressed in the  current draft.
There are security concerns regarding possible disclosure of access 
codes, etc, in address.
There was some discussion on what level of requirement the optional 
address elements specified in the full addressing draft need to be 
supported.  There was some support for the current SHOULD and some 
for must; the chair noted that Normative references are really imposed 
by the protocol documents which would use this document .
The conclusion was that there is a requirement to make it clear that 
the additional recipient qualifiers are optional, and a minimum set 
should be used. [see wording in draft].    Therefore, it was agreed by
 the room to add that only the strictly needed elements SHOULD be used.
There is also a need to reference RFC821 or the equivalent DRUMS (if
 ready in time) for maximum length of local part that a recipient must 
support.

There has been a request to use ";" as alternative to "/" for 
parameters; but, ";" needs to be quoted in mailbox. A greater range of
 allowed control sequences in address has been requested; this can be 
achieved by additional 'qualif-type1' elements.

Glen Parsons noted that comments were submitted to the list by the 
voice community requesting that they be able to use "voice=" form. 
In addition, there is interest in using "AMIS=", which has two 
telephone numbers, where the 1st is the number of the voicemail 
system and the second is number of mailbox.

There was support from the floor for for several future extensions of 
this type, hence the most important need is for an IANA considerations
 section to be included in the draft so that  other communities 
to add extensions. 

There was some discussion on the appropriate process to be used in 
maintaining registrations for this name space.   
It was felt there is a need for IANA procedures for registering both
 new keywords and qualifiers.    

It was noted that the development of standards track documents was one
 of the ways to register new keywords and qualifiers, but not the only
way.   The consensus was that an IANA considerations section is needed
 within this document and it should be reviewed on the list.   Since 
this document is not on the critical path [for ITU cooperation], it was
 proposed that  early January would be a good timeframe.   

In further discussion, it was noted that the pending  SIP document from
 the MMUSIC WG has a URL scheme that uses phone addresssing elements. 
The question was raised on whether we should try for alignment between 
this and the e-mail addressing work? It was noted that by the author 
that  some attempt at alignment has already been made.
The chair summarized the discussion by stating that the  full 
addressing document has been available for some time, and has been 
subjected to significant levels of review. Final detail comments 
should be set to the list for a targeted completion in January, once 
the draft which includes the IANA considerations section has been 
posted.   

- Other drafts
--- The related work from the 'conneg' WG was summarized by chair Ted
 Hardie:
The -reg- draft has undergone WG and IETF last call, and is in IESG review. 
The -media-features- draft is in IETF last call: some comments 
suggesting small revisions have been received. 
Regarding the -syntax- draft, Hardie suggested that interested persons
 should  come to the conneg WG meeting scheduled for later in the day.

 The decision on moving to last call will be made after today's conneg 
meeting.   It was noted that  the fax feature schema document contains
 many examples that help to clarify the content of the syntax document.

--- T.30 feature mapping

Per the chair, there is a WG consensus that this document is needed.   It
is , intended to be progressed as an informational 
document.  Author Klyne noted that there is a section that is still 
missing, dealing with the detail of transformation from T.30 DIS to 
conneg feature expressions, pending completion of the fax schema draft.
The conclusion was that the  goal is to complete and stabilize on January
time frame.

- Review of charter update
[see slides from chair]
What's left?
--- Potential progression of the simple mode documents to draft 
standard. The necessary 6 months has elapsed. The documents need 
to be revisited, so that  comments and interworking testing experience
 can be folded in. This may result in recycle at proposed or move to 
draft, depending on whether any technical changes are needed.
--- onramp/offramp: Offramp work has been deferred. Onramp has been 
left out of scope to date, but interworking experience suggests that 
this decision should be reviewed. DSN/MDN extensions for offramps to be
 considered. There could be problems with IPR, and the experience of 
other groups suggests this is a difficult area to standardize.
--- DSN/MDN extensions for processability (can receiver view/print the 
document as received?): The Fax WG has pushed the standard features of
 DSN/MDN to the limit; It was noted that the members of the DRUMS WG
 are interested in considering MDN/DSN extensions (and mailcap) as 
priorities for work by the email community once DRUMS is complete.
--- New IETF work: security, ODMR, Mailcap.

There was some discussion about current and pending IETF work which 
may be valuable to incorporate for Internet fax use it is available.    
Paul Hoffman provided a short review of the status of security for 
email.  The OpenPGP message format has been approved. 
S/MIME WG is ready for IETF last call next week on their main 
documents.  
A difference between the two approaches is that S/MIME has a much 
better-specified public key infrastructure interface than OpenPGP.  
This may be viewed as an advantage or a disadvantage. The three main 
drafts are base format, message format,and certification. A 4th draft
 (ESS) is looking at signed return receipts. All of these documents 
are on the same timeline. There is also security labels (labelling 
for vetting who can see a document).

-- Other potential charter items

There was discussion on whether an  an implementer's guide is an 
appropriate document. It was noted that  Mike Moldovan has volunteered
 to  worki on such as  draft,  based on interworking experiences.     
It was not clear what addition charter milestones will be acceptable 
to the ADs.  It was noted that for document/process issues, a mailing 
list may stay open even if the WG closes.  It was further noted that 
gateway issues may involve a lot of work and IETF experience is 
limited.  There was thought that incorporation of new features such as 
additional security and enhanced MDN/DSN may go beyond full mode 
(super-mode?)  The question of the need for security gateways between
 G3 and email was briefly discussed, but this is not really needed 
until there is deployment, which currently is non-existant for G3 fax.    
- File Formats - there was brief discussion on  file formats other than
TIFF (e.g. postscript, 
PDF). Should this be revisited? Current progress in ITU to extend 
resolutions, include new compression (e.g. JBIG2, etc.). Need to 
consider extending TIFF format to encompass new developments.  It was
 noted that by the chair stable references would need to be in place 
in a 6-9 month timeframe; JBIG2 is far enough out to be out 
of scope.

There was the further comment that "Super-fax" would need to reconcile
 fundamental differences in transmission models of fax and e-mail.

- Status of MailCap and ODMR(On Demand Mail Relay)
The  Mailcap -- activity is going on behind the scenes, expect some 
news about January.   The ODMR draft from Gellens (draft-gellens
-on-demand-05.txt) is awaiting a pending new standards track 
authentication method based on digest authentication for SASL. 
Completion of the draft is targeted in the next couple of months
 timeframe. The method currently operates at level of a full 
domain rather than individual mailboxes, but the author believes it
 could be extended if required.

--- Charter review timescales
[See James' slide]

Some straw polls were conducted on refined/new milestones.   
There was Consensus for adding a milestone of an implementers guide 
as work item, for January submission as I-D.
Onramp/offramp: A considerations document was proposed for  February. 
The room felt that this is a complicated topic, and this is not an 
"emergency" task, hence wary of pushing for a quick result. It was 
suggested that  this becomes less of an immediate 
focus.   The chair agreed to push this date back, noting 
implementer feedback would help here.
- Progressing Simple Mode Documents to Draft Standard

There was some discussion on potential revisions to the simple mode 
documents.  Points made includedupdating RFC2305 language to be more 
specific and clear about some of the gateway issues 2)  .
It was felt there is a  need to document interoperability, and use of
 licensed technology.   This sequed into a brief IPR discussion on 
known patents.   The understanding of the chair with respect to these 
matters was 1)   For Biscom we don't yet know if their patent overlaps
 simple mode in any way (the chair is in contact with them)  and 
2)  Matsushita patent was stated to be be non-overlapping in mail to 
the list by one of the patent holders; a related statement has been 
posted to the IETF. It was further noted that the draft standard 
requirement involves finding two interoperable implementations 
which employ licensable technology on an open non-discriminatory basis;
i.e. two examples of the IPR being used in a demonstrably 
non-infringing fashion is sufficient to meet the "reasonable" condition
of RFC 2026.

The chair asked if  January 1999 was a reasonable timeframe for 
proceeding to draft status for simple mode? It was counter-proposed 
that February be the target in order to have things in shape 
for the March IETF. 

There was a proposal from the floor to to combine simple and extended 
documents.  The chair and the rapporteur stated that this would be 
unacceptable to ITU.  It was clarified that it would be more practical
 to merge documents when *both* are ready to advance to draft standard,
 so that this would be much later. 

The conclusion of the room was that the target should be February 1999
 for publication of draft mode documents, followed by a review at the
 March meeting and  formal submission to the IESG in April.

Proposed: I-D profile of ODMR profile for Internet fax published April
1999. There was some discussion on whether this would be informational
 or standards track, but it was concluded that this can't be resolved 
until there is an ODMR document available for reference.    
Proposed: I-D profile on refinements to reporting extensions for 
Internet fax.   This is likely to be linked to work by the mail 
community on extensions to DSN/MDN, but the fax community needs to 
participate to ensure that our needs are met.   

Conclusion:   The chair will update the milestones based on the
 charter review and post them to the list.   It may be sufficient to 
simply add milestones and not do a full charter update.   

- Interworking update

The chair introduced this agenda item, noting that 
some interoperability testing has been performed:
--- In Japan, in October 1998, there was 
testing of interoperability of simple mode among fax vendors (8 vendors).
All testing was done over the Internet. Contents of testing was much 
like the San Jose tests. 
The Wide project has prepared a free software toolkit for Internet fax
systems.

--- San Jose: December 1998
[see James' slide]
There was testing by 17 companies in a face to face two day session.
Just about everything in the simple mode and TIFF profiles but lossless
JBIG was tested successfully.  It was noted that 
iImplementors need to read TIFF-S section in RFC2301 very carefully. 
Some implementors assumed TIFF-F constraints on bit order and  byte 
order applied, which was inconsistent with the S profile constraints 
used in simple mode. The related suggestion was to add profile labels
 to relevant chapter headings when updating the RFC 2301 text. There
 was also an issue regarding the proper handling  if other multipart 
structures with other media types come into play.      RFC 2305  
currently says multipart failure handling is all-or-nothing; may need 
to be reviewed.
Support for message/RFC822 for forwarding was uneven.
This suggests that some clarification of required MIME support should 
be provided in the update to RFC 2305.  It was also noted that onramps 
may need to use the "badfaxlines" TIFF attribute (allowed in profile F,
not in S). But general TIFF behaviour is to ignore unrecognized tags 
(this only applies to MH/MR encodings).

The  proposal to create an "Implementation Discoveries" document has 
been well received and will be added to the charter milestones as 
agreed during the charter review.
In other review of results, Dave Crocker noted that  there was much 
use of non-standard addressing for offramps.   So far, there was not 
much telephone use, but that present was very successful. Lots of small
 bugs were found in implementations(but that is what these events are 
for).

Lloyd McIntyre review the results for TIFF profile interoperability 
(also tested in San Jose): This entailed testing profiles within TIFF 
other than S and F. Three participants tested profiles J, C, and M. The
 L profile was not tested (color JBIG). Testing continues in US and 
Japan. He anticipates that all of the profiles will be fully 
tested by January 1999, with issue of full report of implications to 
RFC 2301. It was noted that the  IMC interworking event will be in 
about 6 months. Sample files will be posted on the IMC web site.  In 
addition, EMA is working on a public interoperability demonstration.
The good news here is that real implementations are being developed.

- Fax over IPP status
[see Rich Shockey's slides]
See: <draft-shockey-ipp2ifax-00.txt>
The starting point is to ensure that use of fax over IPP meets the
 requirements of -goals-. There are some added benefits (session mode).
 The protocol documents already exist (Informational in January 1999).
There is work required which includes 1) describe how to satisfy legal and
"custom and practice" 
requirements,  2) "Watermarking" of pages, 3)  cover page generation, 4)
Sender 
identification,  and 5) Gateway issues and attribute mapping for file 
types and relay modes. There are also some questions of usage to 
resolve.  IPP has an advantage of being "recipient driven"; no media 
limits imposed by the system.

Fax WG members are invited (urged) to participate in these discussions,
 which will take place outside of the Internet Fax WG.    

The Mail list is: [email-masked]. 
Subscribe by sending message to <[email-masked]> 
with message body containing "subscribe ifx <your-e-mail-address>".
Some volunteers were noted.

In another item, it was noted that there is an MDN/DSN interoperability
 event planned in February 1999.  

--The meeting closed at 11:40--

*------------------------------------------------*
James Rafferty			
President, Human Communications 	
12 Kevin Drive			
Danbury, CT  06811-2901		
USA					
Voice/Fax:  +1-203-746-4367
Email:  [email-masked]
	 [email-masked]

HC Web Site:  http://www.humancomm.com  
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