Mail Extensions (mailext) Charter


NOTE: This charter is accurate as of the 32nd IETF Meeting in Danvers. It may now be out-of-date. (Consider this a "snapshot" of the working group from that meeting.) Up-to-date charters for all active working groups can be found elsewhere in this Web server.

Chair(s)

Applications Area Director(s):

Area Advisor

Mailing List Information

Description of Working Group

The Mail Extensions Working Group will review, refine as needed, and then make a recommendation on standardization of several recent proposals for standards-track compatible extensions to SMTP (via the Service Extensions mechanism), MIME (via new Content Subtypes), and MIME-MHS (via MIME Content Subtypes and usage rules).

It will also act as the review body for several documents that clarify and provide applicability statements about the use of Internet mail: that work will ultimately lead to an update for the mail-related section of RFC 1123. Part of that effort involves RARE WG-MSG documents that address the Internet's installed electronic mail infrastructure. Since such documents should not be processed in RARE alone, this working group will act as the IETF focus for reviewing them.

Initial drafts of all of the documents that the working group is expected to review have already been, or will soon be, published. The working group will be starting with documents that have been prepared as individual (or spontaneous design team) contributions. It is not expected to initiate new work. On the other hand, it is expected to make explicit ``not ready for standardization'' or ``inappropriate for standardization'' recommendations if that is appropriate.

The working group will be initialized with the following Internet- Drafts or their successors, listed alphabetically. A major purpose of its first meeting is to prune or add to this list.

draft-freed-ftbp-00.txt

draft-freed-smtp-pipeline-00.txt

draft-houttuin-mailservers-02.txt

draft-rare-msg-a-bombs-00.txt

draft-rare-msg-c-bombs-00.txt

draft-vaudreuil-smtp-binary-04.txt

draft-vaudreuil-smtp-stream-00.txt

Goals and Milestones

Done
Meet at the Toronto IETF. Review pending Internet-Drafts and decide for each whether it is ready for processing to Proposed, should be published as Experimental or Informational, should be discarded as a working group effort, or should be a candidate for further working group development. Refine the charter and work plan.
Jul 94
Publish an Internet-Draft on mail transport clarifications.
Sep 94
Revised drafts and IESG processing of any documents that were concluded in July to be ready for processing.
Oct 94
Revised versions of specification documents identified as needing further development published as Internet-Drafts and ready for processing and final review.
Oct 94
Publication of revised versions of any documents that were concluded in July to be ready to advance onto the standards track.
Dec 94
Final review of remaining specification documents during the San Jose IETF. Penultimate review of clarifications and applicability statements documents.
Jan 95
New Internet-Drafts of clarifications and applicability statements documents.
Jan 95
Final Internet-Drafts of specification documents ready for Last Call and IESG processing to Proposed Standard.
Apr 95
Final review on clarifications and applicability statements documents as Internet-Drafts during IETF.
May 95
Clarifications and applicability statements documents ready for Last Call and IESG processing to Proposed Standard.

Current Internet-Drafts

Request for Comments