Notes from the IETF 53 Internet Fax meeting Minneapolis, March 18th 2002. The meeting started with the approval of the proposed agenda, 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. Apparently 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 more 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 Standard 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/reader should be used for the specific body part (although some different flavors 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 strict "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 specifications. 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 confirms that the needed fixes to the documents and IANA registries should be quick, thus solving these dependencies. Regarding TIFF-FX, we will wait until these documents find their way. Larry Masinter presents then some considerations and objections regarding the indipendency 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 products. He objects that testing single features (like for example the ability of a MIME reader to recognize the appropriate TIFF-FX decoder) does not conform to the general IETF specification for interoperability testing. Lloyd McIntyre objected that the issues raised by Larry were not correct, and that both the independency 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 in the IETF try to move to Draft Standard something which has Patented technology inside, and thus the whole process needs some fixes, especially to ensure that the dialog with the Patent holders 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 this is the first time which an interoperability test plan is done for a MIME type registration, and that the test actions (see slides) are definitely obvious and simple, but in order to fulfill all possible flavors 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 conformant to Internet Fax specifications. The specific MIME type image/tiff-fx test procedure is the accepted (with the 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 independent clearly licensed implementation 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. Theirs 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 in the 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 consequently 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, especially about the T.37 distribution issue. Apparently 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 distribution was restarted. (see slides). Richard Shockey (see slides) introduced 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 investigated 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 recommends 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 re-chartering 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? re-chartered 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 with a very clear and delimited 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 finished 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 startup process should be straightforward. 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 continue at VPIM wg meeting to finalize 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!".