Internet-Draft: draft-kunze-anvl-01.txt J. Kunze ANVL Record Format University of California Expires 14 August 2005 B. Kahle Internet Archive J. Masanes European Archive G. Mohr Internet Archive 14 February 2005 A Name-Value Language (ANVL) Status of this Document 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 disclosed, or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she become aware will be disclosed, in accordance with RFC 3668. 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. Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments to jak@ucop.edu. Creative Commons Copyright (CC) The Internet Society (2005). Public Domain. Abstract ANVL (A Name-Value Language) is a simple record syntax based on email headers. An ANVL record is a sequence of data elements ending in a blank line. An element consists of a label, a colon, and an optional value, and a long value may be folded (continued) onto the next line by inserting a newline and indenting the next line. A value folded J. Kunze [Page 1]
Internet Draft ANVL Record Format February 2005 across several lines is treated as if the lines were joined on one long line; any line beginning with `#' is treated as a "comment". Example ANVL record: entry: # first draft who: Gilbert, W.S. | Sullivan, Arthur what: The Yeomen of the Guard when/created: 1888 J. Kunze [Page 2]
Internet Draft ANVL Record Format February 2005 1. A Name-Value Language ANVL (A Name-Value Language) is a simple record syntax based on email headers [RFC822]. It is generally much simpler than email headers, but it adds comment lines, record boundaries, and the assumption of UTF-8 [RFC3629] character encoding. An ANVL record is a sequence of data elements ending in a blank line. An element consists of a label, a colon, and an optional value. Here is an example of a record in the ANVL syntax. entry: # first draft who: Gilbert, W.S. | Sullivan, Arthur what: The Yeomen of the Guard when/created: 1888 A long value may be folded (continued) onto the next line by inserting a newline and indenting the next line. An element value folded across several lines is treated as if the lines were joined together on one long line, with the end-of-line and any subsequent spaces and tabs considered equivalent to exactly one space. Finally, any line beginning with a `#' (hash) character is treated as if it were not present; this is a "comment" line. The ANVL specification is silent on the nature or lexical composition of both names and values. Other specifications may use ANVL by layering on semantics and additional syntactic rules, but that is outside the scope of ANVL. 2. Registration of MIME Media Type text/anvl This section describes, as per [RFC2048], the MIME type associated with the ANVL format. MIME media type name: text MIME subtype name: anvl Required parameters: None Optional parameters: None Encoding considerations: UTF-8 is the default character encoding. While [RFC2046] (section 4.1.1) stipulates that "text" types use CRLF (hex 0d + hex 0a) as an end-of-line marker, in practice this is not always true (e.g., text/xml). It is important for applications also to accept CR or LF by itself as an end-of-line. J. Kunze 2. Registration of Media Type text/anvl [Page 3]
Internet Draft ANVL Record Format February 2005 Security considerations: The ANVL record syntax poses no direct risk to computers and networks. Implementors need to be aware of source authority and trustworthiness of information structured in ANVL. Readers and writers subject themselves to all the risks that accompany normal operation of data processing services (e.g., buffer overflow attacks). Because it discloses and bounds data elements, ANVL may actually be used to clarify and secure a communication that would otherwise be completely unstructured. Interoperability considerations: None Published specification: RFC yyy Applications which use this media type: Any simple data transfer Additional information: none Person and email address to contact for further information: John Kunze jak@ucop.edu Intended usage: COMMON Author/Change controller: IESG 3. IANA Considerations After IESG approval, IANA is expected to register the ANVL type "text/anvl" using the application provided in this document. 4. Authors' Addresses Brewster Kahle Internet Archive 116 Sheridan Avenue Presidio of San Francisco San Francisco, CA 94129, USA Fax: +1 415-840-0391 EMail: brewster@archive.org John A. Kunze California Digital Library University of California, Office of the President 415 20th St, 4th Floor Oakland, CA 94612-3550, USA Fax: +1 510-893-5212 EMail: jak@ucop.edu J. Kunze 4. Authors' Addresses [Page 4]
Internet Draft ANVL Record Format February 2005 Julien Masanes European Archive Prinsengracht 707 1017 JW Amsterdam, The Netherlands EMail: julien.masanes@netpreserve.org Gordon Mohr Internet Archive 116 Sheridan Avenue Presidio of San Francisco San Francisco, CA 94129, USA Fax: +1 415-840-0391 EMail: gojomo@archive.org 5. Informative References [RFC822] D. Crocker, "Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages", August 1982, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc822.txt [RFC2046] N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", November 1996, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2046.txt [RFC2048] N. Freed, J. Klensin, J. Postel, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures", November 1996, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2048.txt [RFC3629] F. Yergeau, "UTF-8, a Transformation Format of ISO 10646", November 2003, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3629.txt 6. Copyright Notice 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. 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. Expires 14 August 2005 J. Kunze 6. Copyright Notice [Page 5]
Internet Draft ANVL Record Format February 2005 Table of Contents Status of this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. A Name-Value Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Registration of MIME Media Type text/anvl . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 6. Copyright Notice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 J. Kunze 6. Copyright Notice [Page 2]