RFC 767 (rfc767) - Page 2 of 34

Structured format for transmission of multi-media documents

                                                             August 1980
A Structured Format for Transmission of Multi-Media Documents
Introduction



  the letter; the document header corresponds to the date line,
  greeting, and signature.

  For an inter-office memo the document body corresponds to the text;
  the document header corresponds to the header of the memo.

  The commands correspond to the information used by the Post Office or
  the mail room to route the letter or memo.  Some of the information in
  the command is supplied by the UIP.

1.4.  Document Description

  The document is composed of fields.  Each field will carry an
  identifying name.  Typical fields are DATE, TO, SUBJECT, and BODY.
  Most of the fields will be very simple, some will be complex.  The
  body field may be quite complex.  For example, the DATE is a very
  constrained character string specifying the date and time in ISO
  format. A more complex example is the TO field which is a list of
  mailboxes, where a mailbox is itself a property list of address
  information items.  The BODY may be simply a character string, or a
  very structured collection of data representing information in
  different media.

  The BODY may be structured to indicate a controlled presentation of
  multimedia information.  There is provision for the inclusion of text,
  graphics, facsimile, and voice information in the body of documents.
  The presentation of information units may sequential, independent, or
  simultaneous.

1.5.  Other Work

  This protocol the benefited from the earlier work on message protocols
  in the ARPA Network [2,3,4,5,6], and the ideas of others about the
  design of computer message systems [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18].