[comp.text.sgml] [comp.mail.misc] Internet Draft on Multimedia, Multipart Mail

emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/22/91)

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nsb@thumper.bellcore.com (Nathaniel Borenstein) writes:
   I am pleased to announce the publication of an Internet Draft document
   entitled "Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of
   Internet Message Bodies" by Ned Freed and myself.  

--comp-archives-multimedia-interface
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It is my intention to support this mechanism in the newsgroup
<bold>comp.archives</bold> as a standard means of formatting multipart
messages. I will do this gradually, with the intent of not
breaking any existing scripts if I can help it.  In particular, the
existing auxilary headers, at least the ones that really get used,
will stay around for a while, at least until this Internet Draft turns
into an Internet Standard.				<nl>

comp.archives articles are really comprised of multiple parts: there's
an <bold>excerpt</bold> from a usenet news article, a
<bold>pointer</bold> to files on one or more remote systems, a
<bold>verification</bold> that the remote systems actually contain the
files in question, and some <bold>keyword</bold> or
<bold>proximity</bold> information.  These pieces are logicially
separate, and it would be a fine thing to be able to burst them apart
cleanly and do different sensible things with each. 	<nl>

I would hope that the eventual result would be a news reader or mail
reader capable of putting up buttons on the user's screen asking them
if they want a copy of what's mentioned there, and then fetching the
file for them.  Once the pioneering work is done in comp.archives,
other people writing articles in which they want to put up buttons
like this will have a standard to go by.  That'll make scanning for
potential comp.archives articles really easy....	<nl>

It appears as though the main limiting factor in applying the
<bold>richmail</bold> interface to comp.archives is the need to fully
specify a Content-Type which has enough oomph in it to let you snarf
things from all over the place, even if they are in odd or
out-of-the-way places and are accessible through non-standard means.
It's not simply enough to say that a file is available via anonymous
ftp from a site; there are enough places with interesting things where
there the anonymous password must be "guest" (nnsc.nsf.net), or where
there's a second non-anonymous login (netlib@research.att.com), etc.
Some thought needs to be given there.  I'd also like to get the
verification information suitable for direct insertion into
<bold>archie</bold>, so standardization there would help too.	<nl>

Given an infinite amount of bandwidth, you could even encode screen
shots, or voice annotations by your erstwhile archivist, or any other
definable document type.  Could make for interesting viewing.	<nl>
--comp-archives-multimedia-interface--
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<x-signature>
Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com
<x-snappy-signature-quote>
(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can
collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate
unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded
researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational
and training software.   High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272
</x-snappy-signature-quote>
</x-signature>