One document matched: draft-klyne-qualdoc-goals-00.txt
Network working group Graham Klyne, editor
Internet draft 5GM/Content Technologies
Category: Work-in-progress Richard Shockey
Shockey Consulting LLC
8 Septemper 1999
Expires: February 2000
Terminology and Goals for Quality Document Transfer
<draft-klyne-qualdoc-goals-00.txt>
Status of this memo
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all provisions of Section 10 of RFC 2026.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society 1999. All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
Internet fax [1,2] defines a way to send fax data over the Internet
using e-mail. But there is a clear desire, particularly on the
part on non-technical users, for a service that more closely
emulates the operational characteristics of traditional fax [3].
This document sets out some goals for such a service, and
introduces related terminology where needed. The memo "Terminology
and Goals for Internet Fax" [4] is used as a baseline for this
memo.
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Table of contents
1. Introduction ............................................2
1.1 Organization of this document 3
1.2 Document conventions 3
1.3 Discussion of this document 4
2. Terminology .............................................4
3. Operational modes .......................................4
4. Goals for High Quality Document Distribution ............5
4.1 Timely delivery 6
4.2 Proof of delivery/receipt 6
4.3 Date and time information 7
4.4 Data format support 8
4.5 Quality of output 8
4.6 Capabilities exchange. 8
4.7 Addressing support 8
4.8 Legal identity exchange 9
4.9 Legal issues 9
4.10 Cover page 10
4.11 Security 10
4.12 Support for third party operation 11
4.13 Interworking with other services 11
5. Internationalization considerations .....................11
6. Security considerations .................................12
7. Full copyright statement ................................12
8. Acknowledgements ........................................12
9. References ..............................................13
10. Authors' addresses .....................................14
Appendix A: Revision history ...............................15
1. Introduction
The transmission and reception of final form documents (i.e.
presented in a form that describes their final rendering) is an
essential global communications service.
Several protocols and services have been developed over the years
to facilitate document transmission, including the GSTN Fax
service, ITU-T T.30 [3].
Within the IETF several protocols have been developed that
facilitate document transmission, including Internet fax [1,2]
(using e-mail protocols) and the Internet Print Protocol [5] (using
elements from HTTP). But there is a clear desire, particularly on
the part on non-technical users, for a service that more closely
emulates the operational characteristics of traditional fax [3].
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This document sets out some goals for such a service, and
introduces related terminology where needed. The memo "Terminology
and Goals for Internet Fax" [4] is used as a baseline for this
memo.
These goals are intended to facilitate the use of quality document
transfer in compliance with the legal as well as general custom and
practice surrounding document transmission
1.1 Organization of this document
This document uses "Terminology and Goals for Internet Fax" [4] as
a baseline, and describes goals for quality document transfer in
terms of additions and differences from that document.
Section 2 introduces new terminology that is generaly useful in
discussion of quality document transfer.
Section 3 discusses operational modes for quality document
transfer.
Section 4 describes the goals for quality document transfer. It
starts with a brief listing of all the goals, then proceeds to
explain in more detail those that are not described elsewhere.
1.2 Document conventions
This memo uses the annotations described in "Terminology and Goals
for Internet Fax" [4] to indicate levels of desirability for a
quality document transfer protocol:
{1} there is general agreement that this is a critical
characteristic of any definition of a quality document
transfer protocol.
{2} most believe that this is an important characteristic of a
quality document transfer protocol.
{3} there is general belief that this is a useful feature of a
quality document transfer protocol, but that other factors
might override; a definition that does not provide this
element is acceptable.
NOTE: Comments like this provide additional nonessential
information about the rationale behind this document, and
may help those who wish to understand the ideas in
greater depth.
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1.3 Discussion of this document
Please send comments regarding this document to:
ifx@pwg.org
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To see what has gone on before you subscribed, please see the
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2. Terminology
[[[TBD]]]
Watermarking
commonly refers to the addition of marks to each page of
a facsimile transmission. These marks are typically
placed at the top of each page by the sender's terminal
device or software application, and may contain
time/date, sender identification and page number. The
recipient output device does not modify the document once
it is received.
3. Operational modes
RFC 2542 [4], section 2.5, discusses operational modes for Internet
fax. (The intent of "session" mode, described there, is to provide
a timely delivery without being constrained by the kind of rigid
protocol timing constraints that are normal when using a circuit
based protocol like T.30.)
For the purposes of this memo, the following operational mode
definitions are used:
o "Store and forward", per RFC 2542.
o "Timely delivery" means that a document is delivered, and any
confirmation is returned, reliably and within a predictable
period of time that is short enough to be useful for the purposes
of routine communications.
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o "Prompt delivery" means that a document is delivered, and any
confirmation is returned, in little longer that it takes to
actually transmit the document data. That is, for a moderately
sized document the sender might be expected to wait for
completion of the transfer.
o "Real time" means that delivery is completed within some defined
maximum time delay, or the process of delivery is deemed to have
failed. Traditional Group 3 facsimile is a real time service in
this sense. True real time behaviour can be difficult to achieve
reliably in the global Internet.
4. Goals for High Quality Document Distribution
[[[It's not clear to me whether we want to separate
specification requirements from "operational goals" and
"functional goals", as in RFC2542. I think we should see
what material we generate for this.]]]
These are:
o {1} timely delivery
o {1} proof of delivery (receipt)
o {1} date and time information
o {1} data format support
o {1} quality of output
o {1} capabilities exchange
o {1} addressing support
o {3} legal identity exchange
o {3} legal issues
o {2} cover pages
o {1} security
o {3} support for third party operation
o {2} interworking with other services
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o {3} it is desirable that a quality document transfer protocol
standard support and facilitate universal messaging systems
(described in RFC 2542, section 2.4.5 [4]).
o {3} if QUALDOCS requires additions to the operational environment
(services, firewall support, gateways, quality of service,
protocol extensions), then it is preferable if those additions
are useful for other applications.
o {3} features shared with other messaging applications (voice
mail, short message service, paging, etc.) are desirable, so as
not to require different operational changes for other
applications.
4.1 Timely delivery
QUALDOCS is intended for delivery of documents where there may be a
strong user requirement for timeliness, with some guarantees that
if transmission begins at all, it will complete quickly. For
example, it is a common practice to fax documents for discussion to
other participants in a telephone conference call just prior to the
call.
QUALDOCS must provide for delivery of a document immediately, or
very soon after it is transmitted. "Very soon" means within a
period of time that a human user might reasonably wait for delivery
to be completed (e.g. less than a minute).
4.2 Proof of delivery/receipt
Detailed progress reports and transaction logs have become standard
end user requirements for a facsimile service in order to document
the receipt and confirmation of facsimile delivery.
Any report from the facsimile service:
o MUST note status (SUCCESS, FAILURE, CAUSE OF FAILURE)
o MUST note date and time of all attempts (log files recorded at
each end by client and server locally)
o MAY note the duration of the transaction
o MAY note the number of document pages transferred
o SHOULD mutually exchange and document the identity of sender and
recipient.
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Traditional facsimile uses real-time monitoring and signalling to
indicate to the sender when a document transmission has completed,
or report on any errors encountered.
Extended Internet fax service proposals [2] recommend the use of
DSN and MDN [19,20,15] for confirmation of delivery and receipt.
NOTE: a considerable body of market survey research
indicates that confirmation of delivery or receipt is the
feature that people most like about traditional
facsimile. Some feel that the non-universal deployment
of DSN, and the possibility of refusing an MDN request,
is holding back market acceptance for some Internet fax
services; they therefore believe that something
different needs to be devised that more closely
approximates the "look and feel" of existing fax and has
the ability to be quickly extended in the future.
4.3 Date and time information
Closely associated with the need for transaction receipt and
notification is the legal requirement (see "Legal issues") that at
least the first page of a facsimile contain the time and date of
transmission and that information be included in any facsimile
service record.
Facsimile terminal devices all have internal clock devices for
recording the time/date of transactions. Actual time information
is not exchanged "on the wire". Each device notes when it sends
and receives documents and logs those transactions appropriately.
All Internet fax transactions note time/date information in the
e-mail header information.
QUALDOCS systems must implement clocks in their systems, or
consider the use one of the time protocols RFC 867, RFC 868, RFC
1305 or RFC 2030 [22,23,24,25], to obtain time/date information for
transaction logging.
Examples of transaction information that may be useful to record
include:
- time of transmission by sender
- time of reception by receiver
- time that rendering (e.g. printing) is completed
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4.4 Data format support
Facsimile and general messaging take fundamentally different
approaches to the payload of a message. Facsimile restricts its
content to image files (specified by T.30, T.4 and T.6 [3,9,10] for
Group 3 fax, or TIFF-FX [11] for Internet fax). General messaging
typically allows any form of data to be transferred, leaving it to
the receiver to accept or reject it.
The approach of facsimile is justified by the the goal of service
interoperability.
In order to facilitate interoperability between QUALDOCS and other
facsimile services, all systems should support a file format that
can be exchanged with other facsimile services, and negotiation of
media features.
4.5 Quality of output
It is a fundamental goal of QUALDOCS that not only is the
information content of a document transferred, but also that high
presentation quality can be achieved (subject the the receiver's
capabilities).
Received documents should be capable of presentation that allows
them to be used directly in the same ways that a locally prepared
document might be used. (Contrast with traditional facsimile,
which typicaly does not provide an image one would choose to use
directly in a company report.)
4.6 Capabilities exchange.
Traditional fax devices negotiate and exchange capabilities using
the T.30 protocol. Capability information is passed using defined
data formats, including such attributes as page size, resolution,
speed of transmission and identity of terminal devices (T.30-CSID).
Mechanisms and data formats are available for Internet fax systems
to communicate this capability information [15,16,17,18].
4.7 Addressing support
In order for QUALDOCS to interoperate with other facsimile services
and gateway between them it will be necessary for systems to have a
way to pass GSTN FAX numbers [12], or e-mail addresses [13,14]
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4.8 Legal identity exchange
The identity of senders and recipients in traditional facsimile are
achieved through the legal requirements for fax (see LEGAL ISSUES)
and the exchange of T.30 CSID frames between terminal devices.
IFAX uses e-mail header information to identify the sender to the
recipient. The recipient has no requirement to exchange
identification data.
QUALDOCS should define a mechanism for achieving this kind of
exchange of identity between the sender and receiver.
4.9 Legal issues
The United States Federal Communication Commission regulations and
US Federal Law (47 USC 227) state:
"Identification Required on Fax Messages
The FCC's rules require that any message sent to a fax machine
must clearly mark on the first page or on each page of the
message:
o the date and time the transmission is sent;
o the identity of the sender; and
o the telephone number of the sender or of the sending fax
machine.
All fax machines manufactured on or after December 20, 1992 and
all facsimile modem boards manufactured on or after December 13,
1995 must have the capability to clearly mark such identifying
Information on the first page or on each page of the
Transmission."
Of particular note is that there is no requirement that the marks
for identifying information be placed on every page. The legal
requirement is only for the first page, though it has become custom
and practice among all FAX device manufacturers to include the
"watermark" on each page transmitted.
It is believed that some other nations have legal requirements for
FAX similar to those in the United States.
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4.10 Cover page
Closely associated with the legal issues are the formats and
requirements for cover pages.
QUALDOCS should provide a mechanism to include cover page
information that conforms to the legal or general custom and
practice applied to facsimile services, when such information is
not already part of the document being sent.
To satisfy legal requirements for Facsimile transmission cover
pages:
o MUST contain identification of Sender:
o SHOULD contain identification of Recipient:
o MUST contain time/Date of Transmission:
o MAY contain number of pages in Transmission:
o MAY contain an area for short comments:
Workstation software, when operating in a facsimile service mode,
should offer cover page generation options and may offer other
features, as deemed appropriate.
If possible, cover page information should be distinguishable from
message payload data (e.g. see the cover page proposal for Internet
fax [21]).
4.11 Security
Security here encompases a number of inter-related issues.
o Privacy: not disclosing private information about a user's
affairs, either through disclosure of confidential message
content, or my disclosure of a user's actions and preferences in
sending or receiving a document.
o Authenticity: not providing information that would mislead a
user into incorrectly believing a message has been received from
or by some identified person.
o Integrity: ensuring that messages received are a faithfull
rebdition of what was sent.
o Non-repudiation: for confirmation of document receipt to be made
available that provides some basis for demonstrating that the
message was properly delivered to its intended recipient.
o Availability: robust operation in the face of attempts to
prevent the normal transfer of documents.
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On the surface, it would seem that no one would want to make their
printer available on the Internet.
It should be noted, however, that we have globally accessible
printers available now, called fax machines. If the issues
mentioned above are adequately addressed and documented, this
external availability can be extended to a wider range of devices.
4.12 Support for third party operation
In some environments, it may be desirable to hand off delivery of a
document to some third party and report back (a) the fact that the
hand-off has occurred, and (b) subsequent indication from the third
party that delivery has indeed been effected.
An example of this kind of scnario would be a service that received
documents electronically, printed them, then obtains a signature
when delivering the physical document.
4.13 Interworking with other services
If a QUALDOCS system operating in a facsimile service mode is
unable to send a TIFF-FX or appropriate GSTN fax file format but
wishes to gateway to another facsimile service then the gateway
system must be able to convert the available document data to the
format required by the facsimile service.
Choice of baseline formats and capabilities should take account of
other services with which QUALDOCS systems may be required to
interwork.
5. Internationalization considerations
Quality document transfer must be regarded as a global service, and
any specification must have consideration for:
o {1} transferring documents whose contents are expressed in a
variety of national symbol sets.
o {2} transferring documents whose contents are expressed in a
variety of national languages (in some cases, the language of the
content may be important to its rendering; e.g. text-to-speech
processing).
o {3} document transfer destination adressess that may be expressed
in a variety of national symbol sets (e.g. the names of a person
to whom a document is addressed).
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NOTE: There are a number of documents covering
internationalization issues: RFC 2130 [6], RFC 2277 [7]
and others [8].
6. Security considerations
This document describes the goals for the Internet Fax protocol,
including the security goals. An Internet Fax protocol must {1}
address the security goals and provide adequate measures to provide
users with expected security features.
7. Full copyright statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society 1999. All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain
it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied,
published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction
of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this
paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works.
However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such
as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet
Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the
purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the
procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process
must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages
other than English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on
an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF
THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
8. Acknowledgements
[[[TBD]]]
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9. References
[1] RFC 2305, "A Simple Mode of Facsimile Using Internet Mail"
K. Toyoda
H. Ohno
J. Murai, WIDE Project
D. Wing, Cisco Systems
March 1998.
[2] RFC 2532, "Extended Facsimile Using Internet Mail"
Larry Masinter, Xerox Corporation
Dan Wing, Cisco Systems
September 1998.
[3] "Procedures for document facsimile transmission in the general
switched telephone network"
ITU-T Recommendation T.30 (1996)
International Telecommunications Union
July 1996
[4] RFC 2542, "Terminology and Goals for Internet Fax"
Larry Masinter, Xerox Corporation
September 1998
[5] IPP
[6] RFC 2130, "The Report of the IAB Character Set Workshop"
C. Weider, Microsoft
C. Preston, Preston & Lynch
K. Simonsen, DKUUG
H. Alvestrand, UNINETT
R. Atkinson, Cisco Systems
M. Crispin, University of Washington
P. Svanberg, KTH
April 1997.
[7] RFC 2277, "IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages"
H. Alvestrand, UNINETT
January 1998.
[8] <<<Martin Duerst's draft on internationalization of DNS names>>>
[9] T.4
[10] T.6
[11] TIFF-FX
[12] E.164
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[13] SMTP
[14] RFC822
[15] MDN/DSN reporting extensions
[16] RFC 2533
[17] RFC 2531
[18] T.30 mapping document
[19] DSN
[20] MDN
[21] Cover page proposal
[22] RFC 867 (Daytime)
[23] RFC 868 (Time)
[24] RFC 1305 (NTP)
[25] RFC 2030 (SNTP)
10. Authors' addresses
Graham Klyne
5th Generation Messaging Ltd. Content Technologies Ltd.
5 Watlington Street Forum 1, Station Road
Nettlebed Theale
Henley-on-Thames, RG9 5AB Reading, RG7 4RA
United Kingdom United Kingdom.
Telephone: +44 1491 641 641 +44 118 930 1300
Facsimile: +44 1491 641 611 +44 118 930 1301
E-mail: GK@ACM.ORG
Richard Shockey
Shockey Consulting LLC
8045 Big Bend Blvd
Suite 100
St. Louis, MO 63119
Telephone: +1 314 918 9020
Facsimile: +1 314 918 9015
E-mail/IFAX: rshockey@ix.netcom.com
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Appendix A: Revision history
[[[Please remove this section on final publication]]]
00a 23-Jul-1999 Initial draft, based on an earlier document by
Richard Shockey.
00b 08-Sep-1999 Incorporate Richard's review comments.
TODO:
o Complete terminology section -- identify key terms here.
o Finalize references
o Separate "operational" and "functional" goals? (section 4 intro)
o Separate confirmation of receipt/proof of delivery?
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