Subject: Option 1-5 for TIFF-FX

From: Hiroshi Tamura <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 18:28:36 +0900 (JST)

Folks,

I said:
> > Regarding the choice of option 1-5 for TIFF-FX,
> > there is one favor for option 4 and lots of favors for option 5.

I would like to remind you of those options, again.
(I should have done it in my previous mail, sorry.)

-----

1. Full TIFF-FX: - retain the currently defined TIFF-FX draft
without modification of the encoding set and define both a new MIME
type (e.g. image/tifffx or image/tifx) and a new file extension
(e.g. .tifx or .tfx). The new MIME type and extension prevent
interoperability issues with image/tiff.

2. Interoperable TIFF-FX: - use the new interoperability document
to generate a TIFF-FX subset that is image/tiff interoperable and
retains the current image/tiff MIME type and file extension.

3. Interoperable and non-Interoperable TIFF-FX: - use the new
interoperability document to generate two subsets, a) Interoperable
TIFF-FX, as per #2, and b) non-Interoperable TIFF-FX, which is
composed of the remaining encoding subset. As with Full TIFF-FX,
define both a new MIME type and a new file extension for
the non-Interoperable TIFF-FX.

4. Interoperable and Full TIFF-FX: - this is a combination of options
   1 and 2.

5. Full TIFF-FX with 2 Content-types - retain the currently defined
TIFF-FX draft without modification of the encoding set and use two
MIME content-types within the SINGLE specification. It restricts
the use of the existing image/tiff MIME type and .tif (or .tiff)
file name extensions to profiles S and F, and assign a new MIME type and
file name extension for the profiles J, C, L, and M (perhaps image/tifx and
.tfx (or .tifx)). It's a variant of options 1 and 4.

-----

Of course, there may be other options.

I repeat:
> > We should decide it sooner or later. At London meeting, it is suggested
> > it is done by mid-September.
> 
> We have to wait for at least one week.
> We will choose option 5 if there are no strong favors for other options.

Regards,
--
Hiroshi Tamura, Co-chair of IETF-FAX WG
E-mail: [email-masked]

---

From: "Larry Masinter" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 20:50:45 -0700

In case it isn't clear, I strongly favor option 2:

Only option 2 meets the requirements for "Draft Standard" at
this time, because there have not been any demonstration of
implementations that implement any of the other options,
which require using other MIME types. (While you might
imagine that the implementation changes are simple and that
the demonstrations could be done, it isn't sufficient for
interoperability to be imagined.)

Option 3 is not preferable, but is at least workable,
because the interoperable subset could become Draft Standard,
and the non-interoperable subset with new MIME type could become
Proposed Standard, and upgrade to Draft Standard at a later
time.

Neither of these would delay the progress of "Fax Service"
to Draft Standard.

All of the other options would entail delay, because at
a minimum, independent interoperable implementations
(with independent exercise of any licensing terms) should
be demonstrated before progressing to Draft Standard.