Network Working Group Jacob Palme Internet Draft Stockholm University/KTH draft-palme-mhtml-info-00.txt Category-to-be: Informational Expires: September 2001 February 2001 Sending HTML in MIME, an informational supplement to the RFC: MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML) Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. Copyright (C) The Internet Society 2001. All Rights Reserved. 1. Abstract The memo "MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)" (draft-ietf-mhtml-rev-05.txt) specifies how to send packaged aggregate HTML objects in MIME format. This memo is an accompanying informational document, intended to be an aid to developers. This document is not an Internet standard. Issues discussed are implementation methods, caching strategies, problems with rewriting of URIs, making messages suitable both for mailers which can and which cannot handle Multipart/related and handling recipients which do not have full Internet connectivity. The latest version of this document is available in HTML format at: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/ietf/mhtml-info.html Differences from version 9 of this draft (1) A paragraph about one disadvantage with MAILTO action elements has been added to section 10. (2) A new section 13: Default Font Size has been added (4) A new section 10: Writing Readable HTML has been added. (3) A new temporary section "Issue list" immediately below has been added Issue list Section in Issue description this draft 4 Should some more method of communication between html viewer and e-mail program be described? Are the methods correctly described? 5 Are there any more problems with rewriting URIs which should be described in section 5? 8 Is it OK to say that senders should not assume that recipients will show the value of Content-Description inside Multipart/Related (since HTML has other methods of showing this, for example the
This is an example of HTML code, which is written so as to be readable for people who read it as plain text.
Here is the second paragraph, which contains a link to a separate body part.
Here is an embedded picture:
End of this HTML-formatted message. 11. Textual Alternatives to HTML Forms One important usage of HTML in e-mail is to send forms, which the recipients fill in and return. It is then problematic how to handle recipients whose mailers do not support HTML. One way is to use textual encoding of the forms. This encoding is done so that the user action needed to send in the form is made simple also for those who have only textual e-mail systems. Important is that the textual users are not forced to write complex commands in special command languages. Instead, the form should be written so that the user need only make simple changes to the form before sending it back, like deleting or adding single characters. Below is an example which shows how this can be done. The main principle is that every line beginning with ";" is an explanation for the reader, and every line beginning with "!" is a text, which the user can convert into a command by just deleting the "!" in front of the line. The users will thus have to learn a very simple rule of filling in forms: Just delete the "!" in front of your selections. Technically, the recipient of a filled-in textual form should regard all lines beginning with ";" or "!" as comment, and interpret all other lines as commands. 11.1 Form in HTML Format