Network Working Group C. Jennings
Internet-Draft Cisco Systems
Expires: January 12, 2006 July 11, 2005
vCard Extensions for Instant Messaging (IM)
draft-jennings-impp-vcard-05
Status of this Memo
By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
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."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 12, 2006.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
Abstract
This document describes an extension to vCard to support Instant
Messaging (IM) and Presence Protocol (PP) applications. IM and PP
are becoming increasingly common ways of communicating, and users
want to save this contact information in their address books. This
draft allows a URI that is associated with IM or PP to be specified
inside of a vCard.
Jennings Expires January 12, 2006 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft IMPP vCard July 2005
1. Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [3].
2. Overview
As more and more people use various instant messaging (IM) and
presence protocol (PP) applications, it becomes important for them to
be able to share this contact address information along with the rest
of their contact information. RFC 2425 [1] and RFC 2426 [2] define a
standard format for this information, which is referred to as vCard.
This document defines a new type in a vCard for representing instant
IM and PP URIs. It is very similar to existing types for
representing email address and telephone contact information.
The type entry to hold this new contact information is an IMPP type.
The IMPP entry has a single URI that indicates the address of a
service that provides IM, PP, or both. Also defined are some
parameters that give hints as to when certain URIs would be
appropriate. A given vCard can have multiple IMPP entries, but each
entry can contain only one URI. Each IMPP entry can contain multiple
parameters. Any combination of parameters is valid, although a
parameter should occur at most once in a given IMPP entry.
The type of URI indicates what protocols might be useable for
accessing it, but this document does not define any of the types.
For example a URI type of
"sip"[6] indicates to use SIP/SIMPLE,
"xmpp"[7] indicates to use XMPP,
"irc"[5] indicates to use IRC,
"ymsgr" indicates to use yahoo,
"msn" might indicate to use Microsoft messenger,
"aim" indicates to use AOL, and
"im"[9] or "pres"[8] indicates to use a CPIM or CPP gateway.
The normative definition of this new vCard type is given in
Section 3, and an informational ABNF is provided in Section 4.
3. IANA Considerations
The required email to define this extension (as defined in RFC2425)
was sent on October 29, 2004 to the ietf-mime-direct@imc.org mailing
list with the subject "Registration of text/directory MIME type
IMPP".
Jennings Expires January 12, 2006 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft IMPP vCard July 2005
This specification updates the "text/directory MIME Types"
subregistry in the "text/directory MIME Registrations" registry at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/text-directory-registrations with the
following information:
Type name: IMPP
Type purpose: To specify the URI for instant messaging and presence
protocol communications with the object the vCard represents.
Type encoding: 8bit
Type value: A single URI. The type of the URI indicates the protocol
that can be used for this contact.
Type special notes: The type can include the type parameter "TYPE" to
specify an intended use for the URI. The TYPE parameter values can
include:
o An indication of the type of communication for which this URI is
appropriate. This can be a value of PERSONAL or BUSINESS.
o An indication of the location of a device associated with this
URI. Values can be HOME, WORK, or MOBILE.
o The value PREF indicates this is a preferred address and has the
same semantics as the PREF value in a TEL type.
Additional information can be found in RFCAAAA.
Intended usage: COMMON
[Note to IANA: Please replace AAAA with the RFC number for this
specification.]
4. Formal Grammar
The following ABNF grammar [4] extends the grammar found in RFC 2425
[1] and RFC 2426 [2].
Jennings Expires January 12, 2006 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft IMPP vCard July 2005
;For name="IMPP"
param = impp-param ; Only impp parameters are allowed
value = uri
impp-param = "TYPE" "=" impp-type *("," impp-type)
impp-type = "PERSONAL" / "BUSINESS" / ; purpose of communications
"HOME" / "WORK" / "MOBILE" /
"PREF" /
iana-token / x-name;
; Values are case insensitive
5. Example
BEGIN:vCard
VERSION:3.0
FN:Alice Doe
IMPP;TYPE=personal,pref:im:alice@example.com
END:vCard
6. Security Considerations
This does not introduce additional security issues beyond the current
vCard specification. It is worth noting that many people consider
their presence information more sensitive than other address
information. Any system that stores or transfers vCards needs to
carefully consider the privacy issues around this information.
7. Acknowledgments
Thanks to Paul Hoffman, Sam Roberts and Pekka Pessi for their
comments.
8. References
8.1 Normative References
[1] Howes, T., Smith, M., and F. Dawson, "A MIME -- --Content-Type
for Directory Information", RFC 2425, September 1998.
[2] Dawson, F. and T. Howes, "vCard MIME Directory Profile",
RFC 2426, September 1998.
[3] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Jennings Expires January 12, 2006 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft IMPP vCard July 2005
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
8.2 Informational References
[4] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.
[5] Butcher, S., "Uniform Resource Locator Schemes for Internet
Relay Chat Entities", draft-butcher-irc-url-04 (work in
progress), January 2004.
[6] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston, A.,
Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E. Schooler, "SIP:
Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261, June 2002.
[7] Saint-Andre, P., "XMPP URI Format", draft-saintandre-xmpp-uri-08
(work in progress), December 2004.
[8] Peterson, J., "Common Profile for Presence (CPP)", RFC 3859,
August 2004.
[9] Peterson, J., "Common Profile for Instant Messaging (CPIM)",
RFC 3860, August 2004.
Author's Address
Cullen Jennings
Cisco Systems
170 West Tasman Drive
MS: SJC-21/2
San Jose, CA 95134
USA
Phone: +1 408 902-3341
Email: fluffy@cisco.com
Jennings Expires January 12, 2006 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft IMPP vCard July 2005
Intellectual Property Statement
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
ietf-ipr@ietf.org.
Disclaimer of Validity
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005). This document is subject
to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and
except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.
Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Jennings Expires January 12, 2006 [Page 6]
