Network Working Group G. Klyne
Request for Comments: 3862 Nine by Nine
Category: Standards Track D. Atkins
IHTFP Consulting
August 2004
Common Presence and Instant Messaging (CPIM): Message Format
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).
Abstract
This memo defines the MIME content type 'Message/CPIM', a message
format for protocols that conform to the Common Profile for Instant
Messaging (CPIM) specification.
Klyne & Atkins Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 3862 CPIM: Message Format August 2004
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4. Terminology and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Overall Message Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Message/CPIM MIME Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Message Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3. Character Escape Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3.1. Escape Mechanism Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4. Message Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. Message Header Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1. Header Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2. Header Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3. Language tagging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4. Namespaces for Header Name Extensibility . . . . . . . . 11
3.5. Mandatory-to-Recognize Features . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.6. Collected Message Header Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4. Header Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1. The 'From' Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2. The 'To' Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3. The 'cc' Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.4. The 'DateTime' Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.5. The 'Subject' Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.6. The 'NS' Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.7. The 'Require' Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.1. An Example Message/CPIM Message . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.2. An Example Esing MIME multipart/signed . . . . . . . . . 22
6. Application Design Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
7.1. Registration for Message/CPIM Content Type . . . . . . . 24
7.2. Registration for urn:ietf:params:cpim-headers . . . . . 25
8. Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
11.1. Normative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
11.2. Informative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
12. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
13. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Klyne & Atkins Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 3862 CPIM: Message Format August 2004
1. Introduction
This memo defines the MIME content type 'Message/CPIM', a message
format for protocols that conform to the Common Profile for Instant
Messaging (CPIM) specification. This is a common message format for
CPIM-compliant messaging protocols [26].
While being prepared for CPIM, this format is quite general and may
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