Network Working Group                                    Glenn Parsons
  Internet Draft                                          James Rafferty
  Expires in six months                                   Stephen Zilles
                                                       December 22, 1997
 
 
               Tag Image File Format (TIFF) - image/tiff
                      MIME Sub-type Registration
 
                   <draft-ietf-fax-tiff-reg-03.txt>
 
  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 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 a "work in progress".
 
  To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
  "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
  Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe),
  munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or
  ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).
 
  Overview
 
  This document describes the registration of the MIME sub-type
  image/tiff.  The baseline encoding is defined by [TIFF].
 
  Internet Fax Working Group
 
  This document is a product of the IETF Internet Fax Working Group.
  All comments on this document should be forwarded to the email
  distribution list at <ietf-fax@imc.org>.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     Internet Draft                image/tiff             December 22, 1997
 
 
 1. Abstract
 
  This document describes the registration of the MIME sub-type
  image/tiff.  The baseline encoding is defined by [TIFF].  This
  document refines an earlier sub-type registration in RFC 1528
  [TPC.INT].
 
 
 2. TIFF Definition
 
  TIFF (Tag Image File Format) Revision 6.0 is defined in detail by
  Adobe in [TIFF].  The documentation can be obtained from Adobe at:
 
     Adobe Developers Association
     Adobe Systems Incorporated
     345 Park Avenue
     San Jose, CA 95110-2704
 
     Phone: +1-408-536-6000
     Fax:   +1-408-537-6000
 
  A copy of this specification can also be found in:
  ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/devrelations/devtechnotes/pdffiles/
  tiff6.pdf
 
  While a brief scope and feature description is provided in this
  section as background information, the reader is directed to the
  original TIFF specification [TIFF] to obtain complete feature and
  technical details.
 
 
 2.1 TIFF Scope
 
  TIFF describes image data that typically comes from scanners, frame
  grabbers, and paint- and photo-retouching programs. TIFF is not a
  printer language or page description language. The purpose of TIFF
  is to describe and store raster image data.  A primary goal of TIFF
  is to provide a rich environment within which applications can
  exchange image data. This richness is required to take advantage of
  the varying capabilities of scanners and other imaging devices.
  Though TIFF is a rich format, it can easily be used for simple
  scanners and applications as well because the number of required
  fields is small.
 
 
 2.2 TIFF Features
 
  Some of the features of TIFF (from [TIFF]) are:
 
   - TIFF is capable of describing bilevel, grayscale, palette-color,
     and full-color image data in several color spaces.
 
     Parsons, Rafferty, Zilles     Expires 06/22/98                [Page 2]


     Internet Draft                image/tiff             December 22, 1997
 
 
   - TIFF includes a number of compression schemes that allow
     developers to choose the best space or time tradeoff for their
     applications.
 
   - TIFF is designed to be extensible and to evolve gracefully as new
     needs arise.
 
   - TIFF allows the inclusion of an unlimited amount of private or
     special-purpose information.
 
 
 3. MIME Definition
 
 3.1 image/tiff
 
  The image/tiff content-type was previously defined in RFC 1528 as
  containing TIFF 6.0 encoded image data.  This document re-defines
  the original image/tiff definition to refer to TIFF 6.0 [TIFF]
  encoded image data, but with a revised reference (section 2) and a
  new parameter (section 3.2).
 
 3.2 Application parameter
 
  There are cases where it may be useful to identify the application
  applicable to the content of an image/tiff body.  Typically, this
  would be used to assist the recipient in dispatching a suitable
  rendering package to handle the display or processing of the image
  file.  As a result, an optional "application" parameter is defined
  for image/tiff to identify a particular application's subset of
  TIFF and TIFF extensions for the encoded image data, if it is
  known.  No values are defined in this document.
 
  Example:
 
            Content-type: image/tiff; application=foo
 
  There is no default value for application, as the absence of the
  application parameter indicates that the encoded TIFF image is
  Baseline TIFF or that it is not necessary to identify the
  application.   It is up to the recipient's implementation to
  determine the application (if necessary) and render the image to
  the user.
 
 
 4.  IANA Registration
 
       To: ietf-types@iana.org
       Subject: Registration of Standard MIME media type image/tiff
 
       MIME media type name: image
 
       MIME subtype name: tiff
 
     Parsons, Rafferty, Zilles     Expires 06/22/98                [Page 3]


     Internet Draft                image/tiff             December 22, 1997
 
 
       Required parameters: none
 
       Optional parameters: application
 
          There is no format specified for the value of this parameter
          in addition to that specified by [MIME1].  Various
          applications of TIFF may define values as required.  There
          is no default value for application, as the absence of the
          application parameter indicates that the encoded TIFF image
          is Baseline TIFF or that it is not necessary to identify the
          application.  It is up to the implementation to determine
          the application (if necessary) and render the image to the
          user.
 
       Encoding considerations: Binary or Base-64 generally preferred
 
       Security considerations: none
 
       Interoperability considerations:
 
          The ability of implementations to handle all the defined
          applications (or profiles within applications) of TIFF may
          not be ubiquitous.  As a result, implementations may decode
          and attempt to display the encoded TIFF image data only to
          determine that the image cannot be rendered.  The presence
          of the application parameter may aid in allowing this
          determination before dispatching for rendering.  However, it
          should be noted that the parameter value is not intended to
          convey levels of capabilities for a particular application.
 
       Published specification:
 
          TIFF (Tag Image File Format) is defined in:
             TIFF (TM) Revision 6.0 - Final - June 3, 1992
 
          Adobe Developers Association
          Adobe Systems Incorporated
          345 Park Avenue
          San Jose, CA 95110-2704
 
          Phone: +1-408-536-6000
          Fax:   +1-408-537-6000
 
          A copy of this specification can be found in:
          ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/devrelations/devtechnotes/pdff
          iles/tiff6.pdf
 
       Applications which use this media type:
 
          Imaging, fax, messaging and multi-media
 
     Parsons, Rafferty, Zilles     Expires 06/22/98                [Page 4]


     Internet Draft                image/tiff             December 22, 1997
 
 
       Additional information:
 
         Magic number(s):
              II (little-endian):  49 49 42 00 hex
              MM (big-endian):     4D 4D 00 42 hex
         File extension(s): .TIF
         Macintosh File Type Code(s): TIFF
 
       Person & email address to contact for further information:
 
         Glenn W. Parsons
         Glenn.Parsons@Nortel.ca
 
         James Rafferty
         Jrafferty@worldnet.att.net
 
         Stephen Zilles
         szilles@adobe.com
 
       Intended usage: COMMON
 
       Change controller:
 
         Stephen Zilles
 
 
 5. Authors' Addresses
 
  Glenn W. Parsons
  Northern Telecom
  P.O. Box 3511, Station C
  Ottawa, ON  K1Y 4H7
  Canada
  Phone: +1-613-763-7582
  Fax:   +1-613-763-2697
  Email: Glenn.Parsons@Nortel.ca
 
  James Rafferty
  Human Communications
  12 Kevin Drive
  Danbury, CT 06811-2901
  USA
  Phone: +1-203-746-4367
  Fax:   +1-203-746-4367
  Email: Jrafferty@worldnet.att.net
 
     Parsons, Rafferty, Zilles     Expires 06/22/98                [Page 5]


     Internet Draft                image/tiff             December 22, 1997
 
 
  Stephen Zilles
  Adobe Systems Inc.
  Mailstop W14
  345 Park Avenue
  San Jose, CA 95110-2704
  USA
  Voice:  +1-408-536-4766
  Fax:    +1-408-536-4042
  Email:  szilles@adobe.com
 
 
 6. References
 
  [MIME1] N. Freed and N. Borenstein,  "Multipurpose Internet Mail
       Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies",
       RFC 2045, Innosoft, First Virtual, Nov 1996
  [MIME4] N. Freed and N. Borenstein,  "Multipurpose Internet Mail
       Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures", RFC
       2048, Innosoft, First Virtual, Nov 1996.
  [TIFF] Adobe Developers Association, TIFF (TM) Revision 6.0 - Final,
       June 3, 1992.
  [TPC.INT] C. Malamud, M. Rose, "Principles of Operation for the
       TPC.INT Subdomain:  Remote Printing -- Technical Procedures",
       RFC 1528, 10/06/1993
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     Parsons, Rafferty, Zilles     Expires 06/22/98                [Page 6]