Message Context for Internet Mail
RFC 3458

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Network Working Group                                          E. Burger
Request for Comments: 3458                            SnowShore Networks
Category: Standards Track                                     E. Candell
                                                                Comverse
                                                                C. Eliot
                                                   Microsoft Corporation
                                                                G. Klyne
                                                            Nine by Nine
                                                            January 2003

                   Message Context for Internet Mail

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 (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This memo describes a new RFC 2822 message header, "Message-Context".
   This header provides information about the context and presentation
   characteristics of a message.

   A receiving user agent (UA) may use this information as a hint to
   optimally present the message.

Burger, et al.              Standards Track                     [Page 1]
RFC 3458           Message Context for Internet Mail        January 2003

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction....................................................2
   2. Conventions used in this document...............................3
   3. Motivation......................................................3
   4. Functional Requirements.........................................5
   5. Determining the Message Context.................................6
   6. Message-Context Reference Field.................................7
     6.1. Message-Context Syntax......................................7
     6.2. message-context-class Syntax................................7
       6.2.1. voice-message...........................................8
       6.2.2. fax-message.............................................8
       6.2.3. pager-message...........................................8
       6.2.4. multimedia-message......................................8
       6.2.5. text-message............................................8
       6.2.6. none....................................................8
   7. Security Considerations.........................................9
   8. IANA Considerations.............................................9
     8.1. Message Content Type Registrations..........................9
     8.2. Registration Template......................................10
     8.3. Message-Context Registration...............................11
   9. APPENDIX: Some messaging scenarios.............................12
     9.1. Internet e-mail............................................12
     9.2. Pager service..............................................12
     9.3. Facsimile..................................................13
     9.4. Voice mail.................................................14
     9.5. Multimedia message.........................................14
   10. References....................................................15
     10.1 Normative References.......................................15
     10.2 Informative References.....................................15
   11. Acknowledgments...............................................15
   12. Authors' Addresses............................................16
   13. Full Copyright Statement......................................17

1. Introduction

   This document describes a mechanism to allow senders of an Internet
   mail message to convey the message's contextual information.  Taking
   account of this information, the receiving user agent (UA) can make
   decisions that improve message presentation for the user in the
   context the sender and receiver expects.

   In this document, the "message context" conveys information about the
   way the user expects to interact with the message.  For example, a
   message may be e-mail, voice mail, fax mail, etc.  A smart UA may
   have specialized behavior based on the context of the message.

   This document specifies a RFC 2822 header called "Message-Context".

Burger, et al.              Standards Track                     [Page 2]
RFC 3458           Message Context for Internet Mail        January 2003

   The mechanism is in some ways similar to the use of the Content-
   Disposition MIME entity described in [6].  Content-Disposition gives
   clues to the receiving User Agent (UA) for how to display a given
   body part.  Message-Context can give clues to the receiving UA for