Subject: RE: Last Call: Indicating media features for MIME content to Proposed Standard

From: "Paul Ulrich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 02:14:10 PST

I’d like to applaud your initiative and Graham Klyne’s drafting of 
“Indicating media features for MIME content” as well as the informational 
“Protocol-independent Content Negotiation Framework”.  I think they are both 
excellent and address a problem that I see as a lay user of the Internet: 
improved management of message and non-message data.

I only recently stumbled across your working group in my search for whether 
anyone was doing XML metadata for messaging.  It seems that your proposals 
fit nicely with that notion, and I’m wondering whether you are collaborating 
with the IETF-Trade Working Group on its XML Messaging, the joint W3C/WAP 
Forum work on its Composite Capability/Preference Profiles, or the United 
Nations ebXML.

This may be a minor point, but can “Content-features” in the draft include, 
for example, word count (or duration for audio/video messages)?  I’m not a 
programmer so I don’t know what’s possible.  From a mobile user’s 
perspective, however, it would be nice to be able to decide in advance (say, 
via receipt of an XML token or tag) whether I want to download a particular 
message (or parts of it) from a series of incoming transmissions. Knowing 
for example, that a particular message is 100 words long versus 1,000 (or 1 
minute versus ten in duration) would be useful at times, even if my device 
could download either length.  A longer, less important message (screened 
via XML tags) I might specify for later downloading to a different device 
like a PC or laptop.  (Just having kilobyte file size might not be so 
helpful, as it may vary considerably depending on the amount and types of 
included graphics or formatting.)  Will the draft under consideration permit 
this kind of feature?

Paul Ulrich
Cambridge, Massachusetts

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 14:29:04 -0800 (PST)

Thanks for your comments.  To answer your questions on coordination,
both Graham Klyne and I are participating in the W3C's CCPP effort; we
and other members of the group also follow the TRADE working group, as
well as RESCAP, CNRP, and a variety of other related work.  I am not
familiar with the UN ebXML work; do you have a pointer so that I could
follow that area up?

As for your questions of length (word count, duration, etc.), there is
currently no registered feature tag which would cover that feature.  I
had originally seen other protocol elements (like Content-length) as
having too high an overlap.  I can see, however, that there are some
advantages to an abstracted duration as opposed to size.  I am not
sure whether a single feature could actually cover this ground.  If
you or a group with which you are working would like to propose such
a feature, I would be happy to personally review it.  Since this group
is nearing the end of its established milestones, I would be reluctant
to add it as work item of the group.
			best regards,
				Ted Hardie
				Chair, CONNEG