MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML Documents (mhtml)

CHARTER

This charter revised: 5 May 1997

Current status: inactive working group
Chair: Einar Stefferud <stef@nma.com>

Applications Area Director(s):
Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
Harald Alvestrand <Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no>

Area Advisor:
Harald Alvestrand <Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no>

Mailing lists:
General Discussion: mhtml@segate.sunet.se
To Subscribe: listserv@segate.sunet.se
In Body: subscribe mhtml <full name>
Archive: ftp://segate.sunet.se/lists/mhtml/
Home page: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/ietf/jp-ietf-home.html#anchor1005287

Description of the Working Group:

World Wide Web documents are most often written using Hyper Text
Markup Language (HTML). HTML is notable in that it contains "embedded
content"; that is, HTML documents often contain pointers or links to
other objects (images, external references) which are to be presented
to the recipient. Currently, these compound structured Web documents
are transported almost exclusively via the interactive HTTP
protocol. The MHTML working group has developed three Proposed
Standards (RFCs 2110, 2111 and 2112) which permit the transport of
such compound structured Web documents via Internet mail in MIME
multipart/related body parts.

The Proposed Standards are intended to support interoperability
between separate HTTP-based systems and Internet mail systems, as well
as being suitable for combined mail/HTTP browser systems.

It is beyond the scope of this working group to come up with standards
for document formats other than HTML Web documents.  However, the
Proposed Standards so far produced by the working group have been
designed to allow other such formats to use similar strategies.

The MHTML WG is currently INACTIVE while first implementations are
under way.  To support implementation efforts, the WG Editor maintains
an Informational Internet-Draft ftp://ftp.dsv.su.se/users/jpalme/draft-ietf-mhtml-info-06.txt which
provides additional useful information for implementors.  This
Informational Draft also discusses Web page formatting choices that
affect their efficient use through disconnected channels such as mail.
It will become an Informational RFC after implementation experience
has been collected.  Until then, this informational draft will be kept
current and available in the IETF Internet-Drafts library.

The MHTML Mailing List remains open for discussion of any issues that
may arise during implementation, and to collect information about
successful interoperable and interworkable implementations in
anticipation of progression to Draft-Standard Status.

Goals and Milestones

May-Oct 1997: Monitor Implementation progress and discuss issues.
	      Periodically Update Draft of Informational Document.

    Aug 1997: Meet at Munich to review Implementation progress
	      and informational document.

    Oct 1997: Publish Informational Document as an RFC.

Published Proposed Standards:
(Links to the latest versions of these documents will be available
from URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/ietf/jp-ietf-home.html#anchor1005287
 - remember to reload/refresh this page when you access it to get the
latest version and not an old cached version)

RFC-2110  J. Palme, A. Hopman, "MIME E-mail Encapsulation of Aggregate
          Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)", 03/12/1997. (Pages=19)
          (Format=.txt), URL:
	  ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc2110.txt

RFC-2111  E. Levinson, "Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource
          Locators", 03/12/1997. (Pages=5) (Format=.txt), URL:
	  ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc2111.txt

RFC-2112  E. Levinson, "The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type",
          03/12/1997. (Pages=9) (Format=.txt) (Obsoletes RFC1872), URL:	
	  ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc2112.txt

Internet-Drafts:
	  Sending HTML in E-mail, an informational supplement to
          RFC ???: MIME E-mail Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML Documents
	  (MHTML), version 06: by Jacob Palme. URL:
          ftp://ftp.dsv.su.se/users/jpalme/draft-ietf-mhtml-info-06.txt