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Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource Locators
draft-ietf-mhtml-cid-v2-00

The information below is for an old version of the document that is already published as an RFC.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 2392.
Author Dr. Ed Levinson
Last updated 2020-01-21 (Latest revision 1998-05-08)
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Intended RFC status Proposed Standard
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IESG IESG state Became RFC 2392 (Proposed Standard)
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draft-ietf-mhtml-cid-v2-00
Network Working Group                                        E. Levinson
<draft-ietf-mhtml-cid-v2-00.txt>                           July 24, 1997
Standards Track

            Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource Locators

   This draft document is being circulated for comment.  Please send
   your comments to the authors or to the mimesgml mail list
   mhtml@segate.sunet.se.

Status of this Memo

     This document is an Internet-Draft.  Internet-Drafts are working
     documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its
     areas, and its working groups.  Note that other groups may also
     distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.
 
     Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
     months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other
     documents at any time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-
     Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as
     "work in progress."
 
     To view the entire list of current Internet-Drafts, please check
     the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts
     Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), ftp.nordu.net
     (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East
     Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).

Abstract

   The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) schemes, "cid:" and "mid:" allow
   references to messages and the body parts of messages.  For example,
   within a single multipart message, one HTML body part might include
   embedded references to other parts of the same message.

Changes from (RFC 2111)

   Clarified the example on page 3 on of converting cid URLs to Content-
   IDs.  The example now uses a cid URL instead of an mid.

   Corrected the example messages to have the correct Content-ID form;
   they now use the angle brackets.  Added a Message-ID header to the
   second example.

1. Introduction

   The use of [MIME] within email to convey Web pages and their
   associated images requires a URL scheme to permit the HTML to refer
   to the images or other data included in the message.  The Content-ID
   Uniform Resource Locator, "cid:", serves that purpose.

   Similarly Net News readers use Message-IDs to link related messages
   together.  The Message-ID URL provides a scheme, "mid:", to refer to
   such messages as a "resource".

   The "mid" (Message-ID) and "cid" (Content-ID) URL schemes provide
   identifiers for messages and their body parts.  The "mid" scheme uses
   (a part of) the message-id of an email message to refer to a specific
   message.  The "cid" scheme refers to a specific body part of a
   message; its use is generally limited to references to other body
   parts in the same message as the referring body part.  The "mid"
   scheme may also refer to a specific body part within a designated
   message, by including the content-ID's address.

   A note on terminology.  The terms "body part" and "MIME entity" are
   used interchangeably.  They refer to the headers and body of a MIME

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   message, either the message itself or one of the body parts contained
   in a Multipart message.

2. The MID and CID URL Schemes

   RFC1738 [URL] reserves the "mid" and "cid" schemes for Message-ID and
   Content-ID respectively.  This memorandum defines the syntax for
   those URLs.  Because they use the same syntactic elements they are
   presented together.

   The URLs take the form

     content-id    = url-addr-spec

     message-id    = url-addr-spec

     url-addr-spec = addr-spec  ; URL encoding of RFC 822 addr-spec

     cid-url       = "cid" ":" content-id

     mid-url       = "mid" ":" message-id [ "/" content-id ]

     Notes: In Internet mail messages, the addr-spec in a Content-ID
     [MIME] or Message-ID [822] header is enclosed in angle brackets
     (<>).  Since addr-spec in a Message-ID or Content-ID might contain
     characters not allowed within a URL; any such character (including
     "/", which is reserved within the "mid" scheme) must be hex-encoded
     using the %hh escape mechanism in [URL].

   A "mid" URL with only a "message-id" refers to an entire message.
   With the appended "content-id", it refers to a body part within a
   message, as does a "cid" URL.  The Content-ID of a MIME body part is
   required to be globally unique.  However, in many systems that store
   messages, body parts are not indexed independently their context
   (message).  The "mid" URL long form was designed to supply the
   context needed to support interoperability with such systems.

   A implementation conforming to this specification is required to
   support the "mid" URL long form (message-id/content-id).  Conforming
   implementations can choose to, but are not required to, take
   advantage of the content-id's uniqueness and interpret a "cid" URL to
   refer to any body part within the message store.

   In limited circumstances (e.g., within multipart/alternate), a single
   message may contain several body parts that have the same Content-ID.
   That occurs, for example, when identical data can be accessed through

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   different methods.  In those cases, conforming implementations are
   required to use the rules of the containing MIME entity (e.g.,
   multipart/alternate) to select the body part to which the Content-ID
   refers.

   A "cid" URL is converted to the corresponding Content-ID message
   header [MIME] by removing the "cid:" prefix, converting the % encoded
   character to their equivalent US-ASCII characters, and enclosing the
   remaining parts with an angle bracket pair, "<" and ">".  For
   example, "cid:foo4%25foo1@bar.net" corresponds to

     Content-ID: <foo4%25foo1@bar.net>

   Reversing the process and converting URL special characters to their
   % encodings produces the original cid.

   A "mid" URL is converted to a Message-ID or Message-ID/Content-ID
   pair in a similar fashion.

   Both message-id and content-id are required to be globally unique.
   That is, no two different messages will ever have the same Message-ID
   addr-spec; no different body parts will ever have the same Content-ID
   addr-spec.  A common technique used by many message systems is to use
   a time and date stamp along with the local host's domain name, e.g.,
   950124.162336@XIson.com.

   Some Examples

   The following message contains an HTML body part that refers to an
   image contained in another body part.  Both body parts are contained
   in a Multipart/Related MIME entity.  The HTML IMG tag contains a
   cidurl which points to the image.

     From: foo1@bar.net
     To: foo2@bar.net
     Subject: A simple example
     Mime-Version: 1.0
     Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="boundary-example-1";
                   type=Text/HTML

     --boundary-example 1
     Content-Type: Text/HTML; charset=US-ASCII

     ... text of the HTML document, which might contain a hyperlink
     to the other body part, for example through a statement such as:
     <IMG SRC="cid:foo4*foo1@bar.net" ALT="IETF logo">

     --boundary-example-1

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     Content-ID: <foo4*foo1@bar.net>
     Content-Type: IMAGE/GIF
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: BASE64

     R0lGODlhGAGgAPEAAP/////ZRaCgoAAAACH+PUNvcHlyaWdodCAoQykgMTk5
     NSBJRVRGLiBVbmF1dGhvcml6ZWQgZHVwbGljYXRpb24gcHJvaGliaXRlZC4A
     etc...

     --boundary-example-1--

   The following message points to another message (hopefully still in
   the recipient's message store).

     From: bar@none.com
     To: phooey@all.com
     Subject: Here's how to do it
     Message-ID: <970701.32784@VIers.none.com>
     Content-type: text/html; charset=usascii

     ...  The items in my
     <A HREF= "mid:960830.1639@XIson.com/partA.960830.1639@XIson.com">
     previous message</A>, shows how the approach you propose can be
     used to accomplish ...

3. Security Considerations

   The URLs defined here provide an addressing or referencing mechanism.
   The values of these URLs disclose no more about the originators
   environment than the corresponding Message-ID and Content-ID values.
   Where concern exists about such disclosures the originator of a
   message using mid and cid URLs must take precautions to insure that
   confidential information is not disclosed.  Those precautions should
   already be in place to handle existing mail use of the Message-ID and
   Content-ID.

4. References

[822]     Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
          Messages," August 1982, University of Delaware, STD 11, RFC
          822.

[MIME]    N. Borenstein, N. Freed, "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
          Extensions) Part One:  Mechanisms for Specifying and Describ-
          ing the Format of Internet Message Bodies," September 1993,
          RFC 1521.

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[URL]     Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and McCahill, M., "Uniform
          Resource Locators (URL)," December 1994.

[MULREL]  E. Levinson, "The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type," Decem-
          ber 1995, RFC 1874.

5. Acknowledgments

   The original concept of "mid" and "cid" URLs were part of the Tim
   Berners-Lee's original vision of the World Wide Web. The ideas and
   design have benefited greatly by discussions with Harald Alvestrand,
   Dan Connolly, Roy Fielding, Larry Masinter, Jacob Palme, and others
   in the MHTML working group.

6. Author's Address

   Edward Levinson
   47 Clive Street
   Metuchen, NJ  08840-1060
   USA
   +1 908 549 3716
   <XIson@cnj.digex.net>

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--Tiger-Lily
Content-Type: Text/plain
Content-Description: <draft-ietf-mhtml-related-02.txt>

MIMEHTML Working Group                                       E. Levinson
<draft-ietf-mhtml-related-02.txt>                          July 24, 1997
Internet Draft

                The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type

This draft document is being circulated for comment.  Please send
your comments to the authors or to the  mail
list .

Abstract

The Multipart/Related content-type provides a common mechanism for
representing objects that are aggregates of related MIME body parts.
This document defines the Multipart/Related content-type and provides
examples of its use.

0.  Changes from previous draft (RFC 2112)

Corrected cid urls to conform to RFC 2111; the angle brackets were
removed.

1.  Introduction

Several applications of MIME, including MIME-PEM, and MIME-Macintosh
and other proposals, require multiple body parts that
make sense only in the aggregate.  The present approach to these compound
objects has been to define specific multipart subtypes for each new
object.
In keeping with the MIME philosophy of having one mechanism
to achieve the same goal for different purposes, this document
describes a single mechanism for such aggregate or compound objects.

The Multipart/Related content-type addresses the MIME representation
of compound objects.
The object is categorized by a "type" parameter.
Additional parameters are provided to indicate a specific starting body
part or root and auxiliary information which may be required when
unpacking or processing the object.

Multipart/Related MIME entities may contain Content-Disposition headers
that provide suggestions for
the storage and display of a body part.  Multipart/Related processing
takes precedence over Content-Disposition; the interaction between
them is discussed in section 4.

Responsibility for the display or processing of a
Multipart/Related's constituent entities rests with the

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application that handles the compound object.

2.  Multipart/Related Registration Information

The following form is copied from RFC 1590, Appendix A.

     To:  IANA@isi.edu
     Subject:  Registration of new Media Type content-type/subtype

     Media Type name:           Multipart

     Media subtype name:        Related

     Required parameters:       Type, a media type/subtype.

     Optional parameters:       Start
                                Start-info

     Encoding considerations:   Multipart content-types cannot have
                                encodings.

     Security considerations:   Depends solely on the referenced type.

     Published specification:   RFC-REL (this document).

     Person & email address to contact for further information:
                                Edward Levinson
                                47 Clive Street
                                Metuchen, NJ  08840-1060
                                +1 908 494 1606
                                XIson@cnj.digex.net

3.  Intended usage

   The Multipart/Related media type is intended for compound objects
   consisting of several inter-related body parts.  For a
   Multipart/Related object, proper display cannot be achieved by
   individually displaying the constituent body parts.  The content-type
   of the Multipart/Related object is specified by the type parameter.
   The "start" parameter, if given, points, via a content-ID, to the
   body part that contains the object root.  The default root is the
   first body part within the Multipart/Related body.

   The relationships among the body parts of a compound object
   distinguishes it from other object types.  These relationships are
   often represented by links internal to the object's components that
   reference the other components.  Within a single operating

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   environment the links are often file names, such links may be
   represented within a MIME message using content-IDs or the value of
   some other "Content-" headers.

3.1.  The Type Parameter

   The type parameter must be specified and its value is the MIME media
   type of the "root" body part.  It permits a MIME user agent to
   determine the content-type without reference to the enclosed body
   part.  If the value of the type parameter and the root body part's
   content-type differ then the User Agent's behavior is undefined.

3.2.  The Start Parameter

   The start parameter, if given, is the content-ID of the compound
   object's "root".  If not present the "root" is the first body part in
   the Multipart/Related entity.  The "root" is the element the
   applications processes first.

3.3.  The Start-Info Parameter

   Additional information can be provided to an application by the
   start-info parameter.  It contains either a string or points, via a
   content-ID, to another MIME entity in the message.  A typical use
   might be to provide additional command line parameters or a MIME
   entity giving auxiliary information for processing the compound
   object.

   Applications that use Multipart/Related must specify the
   interpretation of start-info.  User Agents shall provide the
   parameter's value to the processing application.  Processes can
   distinguish a start-info reference from a token or quoted-string by
   examining the first non-white-space character, "<" indicates a
   reference.

3.4.  Syntax

     related-param   := [ ";" "start" "=" cid ]
                        [ ";" "start-info"  "="
                           ( cid-list / value ) ]
                        [ ";" "type"  "=" type "/" subtype ]
                        ; order independent

     cid-list        := cid cid-list

     cid             := msg-id     ; c.f. [822]

     value           := token / quoted-string    ; c.f. [MIME]

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                           ; value cannot begin with "<"

   Note that the parameter values will usually require quoting.  Msg-id
   contains the special characters "<", ">", "@", and perhaps other
   special characters.  If msg-id contains quoted-strings, those quote
   marks must be escaped.  Similarly, the type parameter contains the
   special character "/".

4.  Handling Content-Disposition Headers

   Content-Disposition Headers [DISP] suggest presentation styles for
   MIME body parts.  [DISP] describes two presentation styles, called
   the disposition type, INLINE and ATTACHMENT.  These, used within a
   multipart entity, allow the sender to suggest presentation
   information.  [DISP] also provides for an optional storage (file)
   name.  Content-Disposition headers could appear in one or more body
   parts contained within a Multipart/Related entity.

   Using Content-Disposition headers in addition to Multipart/Related
   provides presentation information to User Agents that do not
   recognize Multipart/Related.  They will treat the multipart as
   Multipart/Mixed and they may find the Content-Disposition information
   useful.

   With Multipart/Related however, the application processing the
   compound object determines the presentation style for all the
   contained parts.  In that context the Content-Disposition header
   information is redundant or even misleading.  Hence, User Agents that
   understand Multipart/Related shall ignore the disposition type within
   a Multipart/Related body part.

   It may be possible for a User Agent capable of handling both
   Multipart/Related and Content-Disposition headers to provide the
   invoked application the Content-Disposition header's optional
   filename parameter to the Multipart/Related.  The use of that
   information will depend on the specific application and should be
   specified when describing the handling of the corresponding compound
   object.  Such descriptions would be appropriate in an RFC registering
   that object's media type.

5.  Examples

5.1 Application/X-FixedRecord

   The X-FixedRecord content-type consists of one or more octet-streams
   and a list of the lengths of each record.  The root, which lists the
   record lengths of each record within the streams.  The record length
   list, type Application/X-FixedRecord, consists of a set of INTEGERs

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   in ASCII format, one per line.  Each INTEGER gives the number of
   octets from the octet-stream body part that constitute the next
   "record".

   The example below, uses a single data block.

     Content-Type: Multipart/Related; boundary=example-1
             start="<950120.aaCC@XIson.com>";
             type="Application/X-FixedRecord"
             start-info="-o ps"

     --example-1
     Content-Type: Application/X-FixedRecord
     Content-ID: <950120.aaCC@XIson.com>

     25
     10
     34
     10
     25
     21
     26
     10
     --example-1
     Content-Type: Application/octet-stream
     Content-Description: The fixed length records
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
     Content-ID: <950120.aaCB@XIson.com>

     T2xkIE1hY0RvbmFsZCBoYWQgYSBmYXJtCkUgSS
     BFIEkgTwpBbmQgb24gaGlzIGZhcm0gaGUgaGFk
     IHNvbWUgZHVja3MKRSBJIEUgSSBPCldpdGggYS
     BxdWFjayBxdWFjayBoZXJlLAphIHF1YWNrIHF1
     YWNrIHRoZXJlLApldmVyeSB3aGVyZSBhIHF1YW
     NrIHF1YWNrCkUgSSBFIEkgTwo=

     --example-1--

5.2 Text/X-Okie

   The Text/X-Okie is an invented markup language permitting the
   inclusion of images with text.  A feature of this example is the
   inclusion of two additional body parts, both picture. They are
   referred to internally by the encapsulated document via each
   picture's body part content-ID.  Usage of "cid:", as in this example,
   may be useful for a variety of compound objects.  It is not, however,
   a part of the Multipart/Related specification.

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     Content-Type: Multipart/Related; boundary=example-2;
             start="<950118.AEBH@XIson.com>"
             type="Text/x-Okie"

     --example-2
     Content-Type: Text/x-Okie; charset=iso-8859-1;
             declaration="<950118.AEB0@XIson.com>"
     Content-ID: <950118.AEBH@XIson.com>
     Content-Description: Document

     {doc}
     This picture was taken by an automatic camera mounted ...
     {image file=cid:950118.AECB@XIson.com}
     {para}
     Now this is an enlargement of the area ...
     {image file=cid:950118:AFDH@XIson.com}
     {/doc}
     --example-2
     Content-Type: image/jpeg
     Content-ID: <950118.AFDH@XIson.com>
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: BASE64
     Content-Description: Picture A

     [encoded jpeg image]
     --example-2
     Content-Type: image/jpeg
     Content-ID: <950118.AECB@XIson.com>
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: BASE64
     Content-Description: Picture B

     [encoded jpeg image]
     --example-2--

5.3 Content-Disposition

   In the above example each image body part could also have a Content-
   Disposition header.  For example,

     ...
     --example-2
     Content-Type: image/jpeg
     Content-ID: <950118.AECB@XIson.com>
     Content-Transfer-Encoding: BASE64
     Content-Description: Picture B
     Content-Disposition: INLINE

     [encoded jpeg image]
     --example-2--

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   User Agents that recognize Multipart/Related will ignore the Content-
   Disposition header's disposition type.  Other User Agents will
   process the Multipart/Related as Multipart/Mixed and may make use of
   that header's information.

6.  User Agent Requirements

   User agents that do not recognize Multipart/Related shall, in
   accordance with [MIME], treat the entire entity as Multipart/Mixed.
   MIME User Agents that do recognize Multipart/Related entities but are
   unable to process the given type should give the user the option of
   suppressing the entire Multipart/Related body part shall be.

   Existing MIME-capable mail user agents (MUAs) handle the existing
   media types in a straightforward manner.  For discrete media types
   (e.g. text, image, etc.) the body of the entity can be directly
   passed to a display process.  Similarly the existing composite
   subtypes can be reduced to handing one or more discrete types.
   Handling Multipart/Related differs in that processing cannot be
   reduced to handling the individual entities.

   The following sections discuss what information the processing
   application requires.

   It is possible that an application specific "receiving agent" will
   manipulate the entities for display prior to invoking actual
   application process.  Okie, above, is an example of this; it may need
   a receiving agent to parse the document and substitute local file
   names for the originator's file names.  Other applications may just
   require a table showing the correspondence between the local file
   names and the originator's.  The receiving agent takes responsibility
   for such processing.

6.1 Data Requirements

   MIME-capable mail user agents (MUAs) are required to provide the
   application:

   (a) the bodies of the MIME entities and the entity Content-* headers,

   (b) the parameters of the Multipart/Related Content-type header, and

   (c) the correspondence between each body's local file name, that
       body's header data, and, if present, the body part's content-ID.

6.2 Storing Multipart/Related Entities

   The Multipart/Related media type will be used for objects that have

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   internal linkages between the body parts.  When the objects are
   stored the linkages may require processing by the application or its
   receiving agent.

6.3 Recursion

   MIME is a recursive structure.  Hence one must expect a Multi-
   part/Related entity to contain other Multipart/Related entities.
   When a Multipart/Related entity is being processed for display or
   storage, any enclosed Multipart/Related entities shall be processed
   as though they were being stored.

6.4 Configuration Considerations

   It is suggested that MUAs that use configuration mechanisms, see
   [CFG] for an example, refer to Multipart/Related as Multi-
   part/Related/<type>, were <type> is the value of the "type" parame-
   ter.

7.  Security considerations

   Security considerations relevant to Multipart/Related are identical
   to those of the underlying content-type.

8.  Acknowledgments

   This proposal is the result of conversations the author has had with
   many people.  In particular, Harald A. Alvestrand, James Clark,
   Charles Goldfarb, Gary Houston, Ned Freed, Ray Moody, and Don Stinch-
   field, provided both encouragement and invaluable help.  The author,
   however, take full responsibility for all errors contained in this
   document.

9.  References

[822]       Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
            Messages", August 1982, University of Delaware, RFC 822.

[CID]       E. Levinson, J. Clark, "Message/External-Body Content-ID
            Access Type", 12/26/1995, RFC 1873 Levinson, E., "Mes-
            sage/External-Body Content-ID Access Type", work in
            progress, ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-
            mimesgml-access-cid-01.txt.

[CFG]       Borenstein, N., "A User Agent Configuration Mechanism For
            Multimedia Mail Format Information", September 23, 1993, RFC
            1524

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[DISP]      R. Troost, S. Dorner, "Communicating Presentation Informa-
            tion in Internet Messages:  The Content-Disposition Header",
            June 7, 1995, RFC 1806

[MIME]      Borenstein, N. and Freed, N., "MIME (Multipurpose Internet
            Mail Extensions): Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing
            the Format of Internet Message Bodies", June 1992, RFC 1341.

9.  Author's address

   Edward Levinson
   47 Clive Street
   Metuchen, NJ  08840-1060
   USA
   +1 908 494 1606
   <XIson@cnj.digex.com>

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