RFC 767 (rfc767) - Page 1 of 34
Structured format for transmission of multi-media documents
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC:767
A STRUCTURED FORMAT FOR TRANSMISSION OF MULTI-MEDIA DOCUMENTS
Jonathan B. Postel
August 1980
Information Sciences Institute
University of Southern California
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, California 90291
(213) 822-1511
, 5-Sep-80 20:19 JBP ;;;;
Postel
August 1980
A Structured Format for Transmission of Multi-Media Documents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ........................................................ iii
1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................... 1
1.1. Motivation ................................................... 1
1.2. Scope ........................................................ 1
1.3. Terminology .................................................. 1
1.4. Document Description ......................................... 2
1.5. Other Work ................................................... 2
2. SPECIFICATION .................................................... 3
2.1. Document ..................................................... 3
2.2. Message Objects ............................................. 5
2.3. Body Structures ............................................. 13
2.3.1. Simple Elements ........................................... 13
2.3.2. Structured Text ........................................... 13
2.3.3. NLS File Example .......................................... 13
2.3.4. Multimedia Structures ..................................... 15
2.3.5. The Media ................................................. 21
2.3.6. TEXT ...................................................... 22
2.3.7. VOICE ..................................................... 22
2.3.8. FACSIMILE ................................................. 23
2.3.9. GRAPHICS .................................................. 24
3. EXAMPLES & SCENARIOS ............................................ 25
Example 1: Text Example .......................................... 25
Example 2: Multimedia Example .................................... 28
REFERENCES .......................................................... 31
Postel [Page i]
August 1980
A Structured Format for Transmission of Multi-Media Documents
[Page ii] Postel
August 1980
A Structured Format for Transmission of Multi-Media Documents
PREFACE
This is the first edition of this format specification and should be
treated as a request for comments, advice, and suggestions. A great
deal of prior work has been done on computer aided message systems and
some of this is listed in the reference section. This specification was
shaped by many discussions with members of the ARPA research community,
and others interested in the development of computer aided message
systems. This document was prepared as part of the ARPA sponsored
Internetwork Concepts Research Project at ISI.
Jon Postel
Postel [Page iii]
August 1980
A Structured Format for Transmission of Multi-Media Documents
Postel [Page iv]
RFC: 767 J. Postel
USC-ISI
August 1980
A STRUCTURED FORMAT FOR TRANSMISSION OF MULTI-MEDIA DOCUMENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
This document describes a format for transmitting structured data
representations of multimedia documents. This format is intended to be
used with the Internet Message Protocol in an internetwork message
delivery system. That system is designed to transmit messages between
processes in host computers called Message Processing Modules (MPMs).
MPMs are located in several networks and together constitute an
internetwork message delivery system. The Internet Message Protocol
defines a message as being composed of an Identification, a Command, and
a Document. This report is intended to define the format of such
Documents. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the Internet
Message Protocol [1].
1.1. Motivation
Computer applications are being implemented which interact with users
in a variety of media (text, graphics, facsimile, speech). As
computer devices become available to process multimedia information it
becomes desirable to use computers to exchange multimedia information
between programs and users via various mechanisms including computer
mail.
1.2. Scope
This format is intended to be used for the transmission of multimedia
documents in the internetwork message delivery system, but it is
thought that it has a wider applicability.
1.3. Terminology
The messages are routed by a process called the Message Processing
Module or MPM. Messages are created and consumed by User Interface
Programs (UIPs) in conjunction with users.
The basic unit transferred between MPMs is called a message. A
message is made up of a transaction identifier (which uniquely
identifies the message), a command (which contains the necessary
information for delivery), and document. The document is a data
structure.
For a personal letter the document body corresponds to the contents of
Postel
