Subject: notes from the meeting

From: Claudio Allocchio <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 23:56:50 +0100

hallo, here are the first rought version of the notes.

Plese provide corrections etc !

thank you!

Claudio

----

Notes from the IETF 53 Internet Fax meeting
Minneapolis, March 18th 2002.

The meeting started with the approval of the proposed agend, except for
the swap of point 8 with point 9.

Tamura-san welcomes the participants, and refers about hte status of the
current drafts:

- draft-ietf-fax-implementers-guide-08.txt
- draft-ietf-fax-content-negotiation-05.txt

are waiting in the RFC editor queue for publication. Ned Freed apologizes
for having the last call about 

- draft-ietf-fax-gateway-options-04.txt
- draft-ietf-fax-gateway-protocol-06.txt

not yet issued by the IESG. Apprently the request got lost. However this
gave him the opportunity for another round review, and some fixes were
identified. A message to the mailing list describes the AD's comments. 

Ned confirms that the request for the IETF last Call for
 
- draft-ietf-fax-esmtp-conneg-01.txt
- draft-ietf-fax-timely-delivery-05.txt

has been sent to the Secretariat, but there are currently moer than 30
requests in the queue. 

Regarding

- draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt 
- draft-ietf-fax-tiff-regbis-04.txt

the IETF Last Call request is also in the queue. We will have some related
discussion later in the meeting. Lloyd Mc Intyre explains again the reason
why image/tiff registration document is targeted for BCP and on the other
hand image/tiff-fx is targeted for Stanrdads Track (currently for Proposed
Standard): image/tiff collects the common use already existing of the tag
since MIME existed, and just reflects the common practice to indicate with
it that an appropriate TIFF write/reade should be used for the specific
bodypart (although some differnt flavours exists in TIFF encodings); on
the contrary image/tiff-fx refers to a new file format, not yet widely
implemented on the network, thus a strinct "standard track" progressing is
foreseen for it. 

The status of 

- draft-ietf-fax-service-v2-05.txt

is dependent on TIFF-FX, DSN and MDN specifiations. Greg Vaudreuil reports
that finally the DSN and MDN documents were sent to IANA, and, surprise,
only at this stage it was discovered that some of registry proposed in
various documents for DNS and MDN we re not in place. Ned reported that
this case happened for a number of IANA related documents, and the
situation is being quickly corrected now, by the new IANA management. Greg
confirmes that the needed fixes to the documents and IANA registries
should be quick, thus solving these dependancies. Regarding TIFF-FX, we
will wait until these documents find their way. 

Larry Masinter presents then some considerations and objections regarding
the indipendecy of implementation and compliancy with Licensing Rules he
believes exists into the interoperability tests which were made for
TIFF-FX file format (see slides). More over he objects to the overall
testing method, proposing the idea that as we are testing Internet Fax
objects, we should only use as test tools objects (hardware and software)
which are intended to be Internet Fax pr oducts. He objects that testing
single features (like for example the ability of a MIME reader to
recognise the appropriate TIFF-FX decoder) does not conform to the general
IETF specificaion for interoperability testing. Lloyd McIntyre objected
that the i ssues raised by Larry were not correct, and that both the
indipendency of the implementation, and the correct licensing were proven
by the interoperability report. 

Dave Crocker reminded that this is the first real case where we inthe IETF
try to move to Draft Standard something which has Pantented technology
inside, and thus the whole process needs some fixes, expecially to ensure
that the dialog with the Patent hol ders is clear at any time, and there
are formal procedures to avoid the interaction problems proved by our
group in this exercise. 

Ned reminds that the IESG is following closely this problem and in
particular the TIFF-FX issue. Thus the IESG, having received Larry's
objections, will put a careful consideration to verify if the raised
points are consistent or not. It is thus strongly suggested to the editors
and the WG to make any possible additional effort to clarify these points,
eventually providing some new interoperability testing, within a clear
framework. 

We go then back to the agenda point, which was a test plan for MIME
image/tiff-fx registration. Lloyd notice that thes is the first time which
an interoperability test plan is done for a MIME type registration, and
that the test actions (see slides) are d efinitly obvious and simple, but
in order to fulfil all possible flavours of the Draft Standard process,
this test should be done. Larry again suggests that for testing even a
single feature like this, one should not use "generic tools" like MIME
User Age nts etc, but only specific "Internet Fax" products which have
this MIME capability. A discussion follows, without a clear conclusion,
but with the suggestion that the WG considers valid to test single
features, but suggests that these features will be then tested also by the
products conformat to Internet Fax specifications.  The specific MIME type
image/tiff-fx test procedure is the accepted (withthe above observation).
The documents will go for Proposed Standard asap, and is aimed for Draft
Standard after the necessary revision period. Again it is suggested that,
due to the objections raised to the previous interoperability report,
while performing the image/tiff-fx tests, additional test with at least 2
indipendet clearly licensed implement ation are added, in order to speed
up the final approval of all the other documents, including the TIFF-FX
file format. 

"As a late X-mas gift" Dave Crocker posted the latest version of

- draft-ietf-fax-ffpim-01.txt

on his web site, asking for the last comments to the wg and list. As soon
and these will be received and included, the WG last call will follow. 

Regarding

- draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-extension-1-01.txt
- darft-mcintyre-feature-schema-extension1-00.txt

there are no news. Thirs status is "dormant" waiting for the TIFF-FX
issues to be solved. 

Claudio Allocchio announced that after polling again the IETF general list
for comments last January, he received suggestions for representative of
some telephone companies to include an additional Implementer's note in
the document regarding the actual u se of "pause" and "tonewait" in real
practice. Larry asked why the specification does not mandate a specific
implementation practice foe these elements, and Claudio explained that
there are currently a large number of existing implementations which
de-facto use pause and tonewait, and even if most of then commonly
implement these features inthe same way, mandating them would outlaw some
others. However, after a brief discussion, the WG suggested that, instead
of an implementers note, it would be much useful to include the
suggestions given by the phone companies "as non mandatory
specifications", using "SHOULD" and "MAY". Claudio will edit conse quently
the document and issue a -03 version by the next days. (see slides). 

Tamura-san reported about the ITU-T meeting held in Geneva in February
2002, expecially about the T.37 distribution issue. Apparetly the ITU-T
was missing the official licensing letter from Adobe regarding T.37 (it
was missing in their archives). Tamura-s an provided them a copy and T.37
distrubution was restarted. (see slides). 

Richard Shockey (see slides) inrtoduced the question "What use of ENUM
could be done by Internet Fax?". Among possibilities lies the announcement
of I-fax devices associated to an E.164 number, including eventually their
capabilities (simple/full mode fax for example). The issue of inserting
capabilities is also discussed into SIP and CONNEG, and ENUM NAPTR record
is just another possible choice. Dave observed that currently the Internet
Fax service seems to "know in advance" that to reach that "service"  a
know gateway is needed, while using NAPTRs one could "discover" this
information from DNS, but the whole model will be different: in fact
currently we only connect via known gateways islands of Internet fax
service. In general the problem must be invest igated carefully. Richard
asked the WG to think and discuss also on the list of possible uses, and
report them to the ENUM lists, too. 

Eric Burger introduced some issues which he described into his draft:

draft-burger-um-reqts-00.txt

(see slides). There are some topics which needs further work, but it is
not clear in which framework to insert them. They all regards "messaging"
in general, even if the generic term "Universal Messaging" should be
avoided as it may convey wrong feeling.  For this reason the provisional
term of "Pink Lemonade" will be used (but Ned reccommends possibly a 'more
standard' name for the activity :-) ). More over there are items which are
not inserted in FAX and VPIM wg charters, and which should require a rec
hartering just to insert them, plus the residual work to be finished into
FAX and VPIM. The main idea is to think of a structure (WG? rechartered
existing ones?) where to perform the tasks, and keeping together the
expert people. The constituency is quite well identified, and the
inclusion of somebody also currently not belonging to it is foreseen. 

Greg then presented some further work items (see slides), in the same
framework, and Glenn (see slides) presented 4 possible scenarios for
perform the tasks. Among the scenario the WG suggested #3, i.e. the
creation of a new WG whith a very clear and deli mited charter (to avoid
the possible generic definitions of Universal Messaging which would make
the new WG an umbrella for nearly anything), which takes care of the new
work items suggested, and eventually of those which do not fit properly
into FAX, VPI M and eventually IMAPext and others. The existing FAX and
VPIM are winding up, and thus should finish their tasks "as they are".
Given than a number of tasks both in FAX and VPIM are expected to be
finisched after this IETF meeting, Claudio proposed that from the next
IETF FAX and VPIM wg meet jointly in the same time slot, also saving time
for the same constituency people attending both. The WG expressed
consensus on this, which need also confirmation from the VPIM wg meeting.
Ned agreed that option #3 i s the most viable solution, and in case the
charter is clear, the new wg starup process should be straighforward. 

There will be (announced on the list) some eventual intermediate
unofficial BOFs during the meeting (the first one rolled out just before
the FAX wg) to define details, and the discussion will continuo at VPIM wg
meeting to finalise a working plan. An edi tor for the new charted is
wanted ! 

Finally the milestones were revised, according to the discussion (see slides):

- TIFF-FX 
  - Draft in October 02
- image/tiff-fx 
  - Proposed in late April 02
  - Draft in October 02
- Gateway protocol
  - Fixing and last call April 02
- FFPIM
  - Last call in April 02
- GSTN
  - Proposed in Jul 02
- TIFF-FX extension
 - (dormant)

Claudio Allocchio and Tamura-san closed the meeting and said "See you all
in Yokohama!". 

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Claudio Allocchio             G   A   R   R          [email-masked]
                        Project Technical Officer
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