Subject: IETF-FAX WG minutes at Minneapolis meeting

From: Hiroshi Tamura <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 17:16:59 +0900 (JST)

Attached is the FAX WG minutes at London meeting.
We already submitted our slides.

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

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Minutes of the IETF 53 Internet Fax WG meeting Minneapolis, March 18th 2002
Chaired by Claudio Allocchio and Hiroshi Tamura

1 Agenda bashing

The meeting started with the approval of the proposed agenda, except for
the swap of point 8 (UM: Unified Messaging) with point 9 (ITU-T)
(see slide: fax-0). Hiroshi Tamura welcomed the participants.

2 The I-Ds that are in RFC editor's queue

Hiroshi Tamura refered the status of the current drafts:
- draft-ietf-fax-implementers-guide-08.txt
- draft-ietf-fax-content-negotiation-05.txt
They are waiting in the RFC editor queue for publication.
Hiroshi introduced that implementerd-guide I-D should become a RFC
along with draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt because of the reference,
and the IANA registration is being processed and almost finished,
regarding the content-negotiation I-D.

3 The I-Ds that IESG is reviewing (Before IETF Last Call)

Ned Freed, Area Director, apologized for having the last call about 
- draft-ietf-fax-gateway-options-04.txt
- draft-ietf-fax-gateway-protocol-06.txt
not yet issued by the IESG. Apparently the request got lost. However,
this gave him the opportunity for another round review, and some fixes were
identified. A message to the mailing list described the AD's comments. 

Ned confirmed that the request for the IETF last Call for
- draft-ietf-fax-esmtp-conneg-01.txt
- draft-ietf-fax-timely-delivery-05.txt
has been sent to the Secretariat, but there are currently more than 30
requests in the queue.

Regarding the following two I-Ds:
- draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt
- draft-ietf-fax-tiff-regbis-04.txt
the IETF Last Call request is also in the queue. We would have some related
discussion later in the meeting. Lloyd McIntyre explained again the reason
why image/tiff registration document is targeted for BCP and on the other
hand image/tiff-fx is targeted for Standard Track (currently for Proposed
Standard): image/tiff collects the common use already existing of the tag
since MIME existed, and just reflects the common practice to indicate with
it that an appropriate TIFF write/reader should be used for the specific
body part (although some different flavors exists in TIFF encodings); on
the contrary, image/tiff-fx refers to a new file format, not yet widely
implemented on the network, thus a strict "standard track" progressing is
foreseen for it. 

4 Targeted for Draft Standard
4.1 Service

The status of the following I-D:
- draft-ietf-fax-service-v2-05.txt
is dependent on TIFF-FX, DSN specifications. Greg Vaudreuil reported that
finally the DSN document was sent to IANA, and, surprisingly, only at this
stage it was discovered that some of registry proposed in various documents
for DNS were not in place. Ned Freed reported that this case happened for
a number of IANA related documents, and the situation is being quickly
corrected now, by the new IANA management. Greg confirmed that the needed
fixes to the documents and IANA registries should be quick, thus solving
these dependencies. Regarding TIFF-FX, we will wait until these documents
find their way. 

4.2 TIFF-FX

Regarding the following I-D:
- draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-11.txt
Larry Masinter presented some considerations and objections regarding
the independency of implementation and compliancy with Licensing Rules he
believes exists into the interoperability tests which were made for
TIFF-FX file format (see slide: fax-2). More over he objects to the overall
testing method, proposing the idea that as we are testing Internet Fax
objects, we should only use as test tools objects (hardware and software)
which are intended to be Internet Fax implementations. He objects that testing
single features (like for example the ability of a MIME reader to
recognize the appropriate TIFF-FX decoder) does not conform to the general
IETF specification for interoperability testing. Lloyd McIntyre objected
that the issues raised by Larry were not correct, and that both the
independency of the implementation, and the correct licensing were proven
by the interoperability report. 

It is suggested that this is the first real case where we in the IETF
try to move to Draft Standard something which has Patented technology
inside, and thus the whole process needs some fixes, especially to ensure
that the dialog with the Patent holders is clear at any time, and there
are formal procedures to avoid the interaction problems proved by our
group in this exercise. 

Ned Freed reminded that the IESG is following closely this problem and in
particular the TIFF-FX issue. Thus the IESG, having received Larry's
objections, will put a careful consideration to verify if the raised
points are consistent or not. It is thus strongly suggested to the editors
and the WG to make any possible additional effort to clarify these points.
Also, he suggested that it is not necessary to recycle the I-D, i.e.,
draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-11.txt.

Following the TIFF-FX discussion, a test plan for MIME image/tiff-fx
registration was introduced (draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt), although
it is now not for Draft Standard discussion.
Lloyd McIntyre noticed that this is the first time that an interoperability
test plan is done for a MIME type registration, and that the test actions
(see slides: fax-7, fax-8) are definitely obvious and simple, but in order
to fulfill all possible flavors of the Draft Standard process, this test
should be done. Larry again suggested that for testing even a single feature
like this, one should not use "generic tools" like MIME User Agents etc,
but only specific "Internet Fax" implementations which have this MIME capability.
A discussion followed, without a clear conclusion, but with the suggestion
that the WG considered valid to test single features, but suggested that
these features will be then tested also by the implementations conformant to
Internet Fax specifications (e.g. as in testing of RFC 2532 "Extended
Facsimile Using Internet Mail" or ffpim).

The specific MIME type image/tiff-fx test procedure outlined in the test
plan was the accepted (with the above observation). The I-D,
draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-reg-01.txt, will go for Proposed Standard ASAP,
and is aimed for Draft Standard after the necessary revision period.
Again it is suggested that, due to the objections raised to the previous
interoperability report, while performing the image/tiff-fx tests,
additional test with at least 2 independent clearly licensed implementation
are added, in order to speed up the final approval of all the other documents,
including the TIFF-FX file format. 

5 On-Going Internet-Drafts
5.1 FFPIM

"As a late X-mas gift", Dave Crocker posted the latest version of
- draft-ietf-fax-ffpim-01.txt
on his web site, asking for the last comments to the WG and mailing-list.
As soon, these will be received and included, the WG last call will follow. 

5.2 TIFF-FX extension issue

Regarding the following two I-Ds:
- draft-ietf-fax-tiff-fx-extension-1-01.txt
- darft-mcintyre-feature-schema-extension1-00.txt
there were no news. We confirmed the status is "dormant" waiting for
the TIFF-FX issues to be solved.

6 Addressing

Regarding the following I-D:
- draft-allocchio-gstn-02.txt
Claudio Allocchio announced that after polling again the IETF general list
for comments last January, he received suggestions for representative of
some telephone companies to include an additional Implementer's note in
the document, regarding the actual use of "pause" and "tonewait" in real
practice (see slide: fax-1). Larry Masinter asked why the specification
does not mandate a specific implementation practice foe these elements.
Claudio explained there are currently a large number of existing
implementations which de-facto use pause and tonewait, and even if most of
them commonly implement these features in the same way, mandating them would
outlaw some others. However, after a brief discussion, the WG suggested that,
instead of an implementers note, it would be much useful to include
the suggestions given by the phone companies "as non mandatory
specifications", using "SHOULD" and "MAY". Claudio would edit consequently
the document and issue a -03 version by the next days.

7 Use of ENUM RFC2916 by Internet Fax 

Richard Shockey (see slide: fax-10) introduced the question "What use of
ENUM could be done by Internet Fax?". Among possibilities lies the
announcement of I-fax devices associated to an E.164 number, including
eventually their capabilities (simple/full mode fax for example). The issue
of inserting capabilities is also discussed into SIP and CONNEG,
and ENUM NAPTR record is just another possible choice. Dave Crocker
observed that currently the Internet Fax service seems to "know in advance"
that to reach that "service" a known gateway is needed, while using NAPTRs
one could "discover" this information from DNS, but the whole model will be
different: in fact currently we only connect via known gateways islands of
Internet fax service. In general the problem must be investigated carefully.
Richard asked the WG to think and discuss also on the list of possible uses,
and report them to the ENUM lists, too. 

8 ITU-T

Hiroshi Tamura reported about the ITU-T meeting held in Geneva in February
2002, especially about the T.37 distribution issue (see slides: fax-3, fax-9).
Apparently the ITU-T was missing the official licensing letter from Adobe,
regarding T.37 (it was missing in their archives). Hiroshi provided them
a copy in the meeting and T.37 distribution was re-started.

Also, the plan for submission of TIFF-FX related documents and
Implementer's guide was suggested for coincidence between RFCs and T.37.

9 UM ("Unified Messaging" was re-named as "Pink Lemonade".)

Eric Burger introduced some issues which he described into his draft:
- draft-burger-um-reqts-00.txt
(see slide: fax-4). There are some topics which needs further work,
but it is not clear in which framework to insert them. They all regards
"messaging" in general, even if the generic term "Unified Messaging" should
be avoided as it may convey wrong feeling. For this reason the provisional
term of "Pink Lemonade" will be used (but Ned recommends possibly a 'more
standard' name for the activity :-) ). More over there are items which are
not inserted in FAX and VPIM wg charters, and which should require
a re-chartering just to insert them, plus the residual work to be finished
into FAX and VPIM. The main idea is to think of a structure
(WG re-chartered, existing ones?) where to perform the tasks, and keeping
together the expert people. The constituency is quite well identified,
and the inclusion of somebody also currently not belonging to it
is foreseen. 

Greg Vaudreuil then presented his draft:
- draft-vaudreuil-um-issues-00.txt
and some further work items (see slide: fax-5) in the same framework.
There are some elements to be considerd in the new work:
Performance requirement, Functional limitations, Message Submission
and Notification.

Glenn Parsons, VPIM WG chair, presented 4 possible scenarios to
perform the tasks (see slide: fax-6). Among the scenario,
the WG suggested #3, i.e. the creation of a new WG with a very clear and
delimited charter (to avoid the possible generic definitions of Unified
Messaging which would make the new WG an umbrella for nearly anything),
which takes care of the new work items suggested, and eventually
of those which do not fit properly into FAX, VPIM and eventually IMAPext
and others. The existing FAX and VPIM WGs are winding up, and thus should
finish their tasks "as they are".

Given than a number of tasks both in FAX and VPIM WGs are expected to be
finished after this IETF meeting, Claudio Allocchio proposed that
from the next meeting, IETF FAX and VPIM WG meet jointly in the same time
slot, also saving time for the same constituency people attending both.
The WG expressed consensus on this, which needs also confirmation
from the VPIM WG meeting.

Ned Freed agreed that option #3 is the most viable solution, and in case
the charter is clear, the new WG startup process should be straightforward. 

There would be (announced on the list) some eventual intermediate
unofficial BOFs during the meeting (the first one rolled out just before
the FAX WG) to define details, and the discussion would continue at VPIM WG
meeting to finalize a working plan. An editor for the new charted
is wanted.

10 Confirmation of milestone

Finally the milestones were revised, according to the discussion
(see slide: fax-0):

- TIFF-FX 
  - Draft Standard in October 02
- image/tiff-fx 
  - Proposed Standard in late April 02
  - Draft Standard in October 02
- Gateway protocol
  - Fixing and last call April 02
- FFPIM
  - Last call in April 02
- GSTN
  - Proposed Standard in July 02
- TIFF-FX extension
  - (dormant)

11 Closing

Claudio Allocchio and Hiroshi Tamura closed the meeting
and said "See you all in Yokohama!".