Applications Area Directors: o Harald Alvestrand: Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no o John Klensin: Klensin@mail1.reston.mci.net Area Summary reported by John Klensin/MCI and Harald Alvestrand/UNINETT This is a report on the status of the Applications Area as of the conclusion of the Stockholm IETF meeting, July 1995. The Applications Area currently contains the following working groups: o Access, Searching and Indexing of Directories (ASID) o Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards (DRUMS) o HyperText Markup Language (HTML) o HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) o Integrated Directory Services (IDS) o Mail Extensions (MAILEXT) o MIME Content-Type for SGML Documents (MIMESGML) o MIME - X.400 Gateway (MIXER) o Notifications and Acknowledgements Requirements (NOTARY) o Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) Of these, DRUMS is new since the last IETF. The MIXER Working Group has evolved from the previous MIXER Advisory Committee (see the April 1995 Area Report). The HTTP Security BOF (HTTPSEC) held in San Jose has evolved into the Web Transaction Security Working Group (WTS), jointly managed in the Security and Applications Areas. HTTP is jointly supervised with the Transport Area. IDS and URI are jointly supervised with the User Services Area. The Electronic Data Interchange Working Group (EDI) concluded its work since the last IETF. Publication of its final product, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document, is pending. The Internet White Pages Requirements Working Group (WHIP) concluded since the last IETF. Some documents were transferred to the IDS Working Group. The Quality Information Services Working Group (QUIS) was also concluded, as discussed in the last Area Report. Finally, the URI Working Group concluded its work during this IETF. See its minutes and discussion below for more information. The Applications Area sponsored three BOF sessions on mime-related media type registration (MIMEREG), content labelling of Web and other Internet materials (RTL), and mail read receipts (RECEIPT) at the Stockholm IETF. The RTL BOF was jointly sponsored with User Services and the minutes of that meeting are reported under the User Services section of these proceedings. Summaries of each of the BOFs is reported below. MIME Registration BOF (MIMEREG) Registration procedures for MIME content types have been evolving since MIME was first approved as a Proposed Standard and these definitions began to be used in the World Wide Web and in other Internet applications. They are now referred to as media types to reflect their broader application. The current registration procedures call for exposure of a potential new type on a mailing list followed by review of consensus and the adequacy of the registration and description. This procedure has probably worked better than its predecessors, but the burden on the reviewer has proved excessive. The MIME standard also specifies that new top-level types can be defined, but discourages the registration of many of these and requires that registration be accomplished by standards-track processing. A BOF session was held in Stockholm to review the general strategy for media type registrations and to examine the top-level type question, especially with regard to a proposal to register `chemical' as a top-level type. Opinions on the latter subject are divided in IETF, occupying the entire range between ``no further top-level types should be registered'' and ``registration for top-level types should be fairly permissive.'' The BOF was inconclusive and further exploration in this area will be needed. Read the Label BOF (RTL) In the recent past, a number of public concerns about limiting access to information on the Internet have been raised. Most of these concerns have taken the form of calls for access limits for minors who might otherwise be exposed to material considered suitable only for adults. Countervailing concerns about the potential for censorship have been raised in response. After brief background remarks by the chair, a discussion followed, the purpose of which was to determine the level of interest among the BOF participants in forming an IETF Working Group to develop technical specifications supporting voluntary information filtering through appropriate, end-user access software. The results of the technical effort would permit users of the Internet to apply some form of content filtering on information obtained from Web servers, file servers, e-mail servers and other sources of information found on the Internet. For concreteness, the discussion tended to fall back on an implicit Web browser/server model of the problem, but it was acknowledged that the general problem was more complex and that solutions should apply to all forms of information on the Internet. Conclusions: o The IETF should investigate technical possibilities for filtering and access controls which could be voluntarily invoked by users and voluntarily supported by information service suppliers. o A short-term working group charter should be prepared which would explore technical means for creating closed groups of clients/servers. A particular client might participate in more that one closed server group. This was recognized as a coarse form of content filtering at the level of entire servers, and thus a very crude means of addressing the problem. o A longer term working group should be considered which would explore finer-grained filtering capabilities, possibly using `metadata' techniques. o Not all information in the Internet is likely to be marked, so any proposals for filtering and access control will have to deal with unmarked Internet information components. Receipt Notifications for Internet Mail BOF (RECEIPT) About 60 participants agreed to add read receipt functionality to Internet mail. The charter for the working group has been accepted. The author of the specification is Roger Fajman, who promised a first draft by end of August. A first technical solution has been drafted already to support functionality based on the NOTARY work. Most of the available time has been spent to find out what exactly the requirements are seen both from the sender's and from the recipient's point of view. There is no consensus yet. Privacy and security issues are a topic of the working group but will be postponed until first experience has been gained. Access, Searching and Indexing of Directories Working Group (ASID) LDAPv2 was discussed, with a draft promised by the Dallas IETF. One candidate (MDAP) was presented at the meeting, as was a different proposal for strong authentication/encryption of the LDAP session, and for supporting stand-alone LDAP. The two Whois++ protocol documents have been approved. The indexing document is still awaiting some issues to be resolved. A discussion was held on various protocol aspects that have surfaced during implementation. The common indexing protocol draft was discussed. The group feels it still needs to be more general, separated from Whois++. Referrals need to be URL-style, Whois++ queries need to be dropped, etc. People should send comments to the list, after which a new draft will be submitted. An Internet-Draft for storing PGP keys in the X.500 directory was discussed and approved by the group, following some changes to the string representation used for the keys. A new charter was approved, with updated milestones. Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards Working Group (DRUMS) The DRUMS Working Group held its first meeting at the Stockholm IETF with about 50 people in attendance. Since the group was only recently formed and did not yet have any documents to review, the working group meeting time was used to (a) list several important issues which might be difficult to resolve on a mailing list, and (b) to discuss in detail one of those issues: whether to change the grammar of RFC 822 to remove ``.'', ``['', and ``]'' as terminal symbols and thus allow them to appear in ``phrase''s. The discussion which ensued illustrated the difficulty of deciding whether to ``fix'' features of the existing protocol which are widely regarded as broken, when the ``fix'' would adversely impact the installed base. A suggestion was made that each such decision be made only after a careful analysis of cost vs. benefit. Since several other issues involve tradeoffs of this kind, the chair directed that a discussion of such tradeoffs and how to think about them, be held on the mailing list, as a prerequisite to further discussions about changes to the actual protocols. HyperText Markup Language Working Group (HTML) The HTML Working Group reviewed goals for moving forward with various HTML extensions, including tables, metadata, super/subscripts, and internationalization. A firm goal was set for clear progress on tables, which are close to Last Call status. HyperText Transfer Protocol Working Group (HTTP) The agenda called for a discussion of the HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 documents, and a proposal for multiple transactions per connection. As the editors of the documents were not present, the discussions were brief. The chair noted that the milestones were out of date. The Area Director raised considerable concern over the lack of progress and coordination in the working group. A constructive discussion of the milestones of the working group concluded the meeting. Integrated Directory Services Working Group (IDS) Reporting on pilot projects and liaison reports will be done on the IDS mailing list in the future to free up time in the working group meeting. Both the Whois++ and X.500 directory catalogues are now available on-line and currently in the process of setting up a procedure for adding in new implementation entries. There was a lot of discussion on the X.500 schema registry and the conclusion was to try and focus on getting this operational as soon as possible. The Internet-Draft will be reissued within the next month. A proposal for managing the X.500 root context was discussed along with two Internet-Drafts on building a directory service, one based in the US and one based in the Netherlands. The group felt that it was important to disseminate practical experience gained to as wide an audience as possible. IDS took over the Simple Internet White Pages documents at this meeting and decided to go for two documents: user requirements and schema requirements. This information will be pulled from the existing WHIP document and the Internet-Drafts will be circulated by the end of August. Mail Extensions Working Group (MAILEXT) MAILEXT did not meet during the Stockholm IETF. Its work is substantially complete; the remaining documents are being polished and undergoing final review before being submitted to the IESG. MIME Content-Type for SGML Documents Working Group (MIMESGML) Due to a combination of circumstances, the MIMESGML Working Group met without either of the co-chairs present. The working group seems to be at a choice point with one complete proposal on the table but a significant fraction of the working group preferring other alternatives. That situation was discussed during the working group meeting and objections to the current draft were discussed among the attendees in Stockholm and on the MBONE. Details of the issues discussed appear in the working group minutes. Don Stinchfield from EBT volunteered that he would author a new draft for this group that was more general, included a discussion of difficulties with the current draft, and still followed the direction of the charter. This draft will be posted to the mailing list in August. MIME - X.400 Gateway Working Group (MIXER) About 40 participants, of which three are actual implementors of RFC 1327, participated at the meeting. A list of 16 open topics streamlined the discussion. The issue on how much ESMTP functionality should be mandatory for MIXER gateways needs more study and has been moved onto the mailing list. All other issues have been solved. There will be a one-day editor's meeting for page-by-page review at Richmond UK, 17 September. An updated version is expected soon after that meeting. The MIXER document handling body part mappings will be split to reduce the number of needed updates. The bit ordering for G3 faxes will be checked with more implementors to get as much agreement as possible. Notifications and Acknowledgements Requirements Working Group (NOTARY) The NOTARY group did not meet in Stockholm. It believes that its work is finished with the IETF Last Call on its documents. Some comments came in during and after the Last Call period; a report on these will be sent. Uniform Resource Identifiers Working Group (URI) While the URI working group has completed all of the items in its original charter, ongoing efforts have identified several additional work items related to resource identifiers that should be pursued. At the same time, the working group had become sufficiently large and diffuse that some proposals for, e.g., new URL types, were not getting comprehensive review. In Stockholm, the working group met, heard reports on work in progress and being proposed, and discussed but did not reach conclusion on a proposal for a revised charter. The working group was advised by the Area Director, John Klensin, that general IETF procedures called for concluding the working group and starting one or more new ones as needed and that highly focused working groups with short time frames and clear objectives were preferred to more open-ended ones. He also reminded the working group that IETF's success record with standardizing research activities has been very poor and discouraged the working group from embarking on activities that still lack a foundation in practice. There were additional discussions in the days after the working group met, culminating in a special BOF session to review options for future work and working groups. Several proposals were outlined. They will be proposed in more detail on the URI Working Group mailing list and, if sufficient constituency and focus exists, submitted for approval as new working groups. The URI Working Group was concluded at the close of the IETF meeting.