Re: Last Call: Indicating media features for MIME content to Proposed Standard

Thanks for your comments.  To answer your questions on coordination,
both Graham Klyne and I are participating in the W3C's CCPP effort; we
and other members of the group also follow the TRADE working group, as
well as RESCAP, CNRP, and a variety of other related work.  I am not
familiar with the UN ebXML work; do you have a pointer so that I could
follow that area up?

As for your questions of length (word count, duration, etc.), there is
currently no registered feature tag which would cover that feature.  I
had originally seen other protocol elements (like Content-length) as
having too high an overlap.  I can see, however, that there are some
advantages to an abstracted duration as opposed to size.  I am not
sure whether a single feature could actually cover this ground.  If
you or a group with which you are working would like to propose such
a feature, I would be happy to personally review it.  Since this group
is nearing the end of its established milestones, I would be reluctant
to add it as work item of the group.
			best regards,
				Ted Hardie
				Chair, CONNEG





> 
> I’d like to applaud your initiative and Graham Klyne’s drafting of 
> “Indicating media features for MIME content” as well as the informational 
> “Protocol-independent Content Negotiation Framework”.  I think they are both 
> excellent and address a problem that I see as a lay user of the Internet: 
> improved management of message and non-message data.
> 
> I only recently stumbled across your working group in my search for whether 
> anyone was doing XML metadata for messaging.  It seems that your proposals 
> fit nicely with that notion, and I’m wondering whether you are collaborating 
> with the IETF-Trade Working Group on its XML Messaging, the joint W3C/WAP 
> Forum work on its Composite Capability/Preference Profiles, or the United 
> Nations ebXML.
> 
> This may be a minor point, but can “Content-features” in the draft include, 
> for example, word count (or duration for audio/video messages)?  I’m not a 
> programmer so I don’t know what’s possible.  From a mobile user’s 
> perspective, however, it would be nice to be able to decide in advance (say, 
> via receipt of an XML token or tag) whether I want to download a particular 
> message (or parts of it) from a series of incoming transmissions. Knowing 
> for example, that a particular message is 100 words long versus 1,000 (or 1 
> minute versus ten in duration) would be useful at times, even if my device 
> could download either length.  A longer, less important message (screened 
> via XML tags) I might specify for later downloading to a different device 
> like a PC or laptop.  (Just having kilobyte file size might not be so 
> helpful, as it may vary considerably depending on the amount and types of 
> included graphics or formatting.)  Will the draft under consideration permit 
> this kind of feature?
> 
> Paul Ulrich
> Cambridge, Massachusetts
> 
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