RFC 3458 (rfc3458) - Page 2 of 17

Message Context for Internet Mail

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