The MIME Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed Content-Type
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
The IESG believes use of this media type is only appropriate in situations where the producer is fully aware of the capabilities and limitations of the consumer. In particular, this mechanism is very dependent on the producer knowing when the consumer will need a particular component of a multipart object. But consumers potentially work in many different ways and different consumers may need different things at different times. This mechanism provides no means for a producer to determine the needs of a particular consumer and how they are to be accommodated.
IESG はこの媒体型を使うのが適切な場面は生産者が消費者の能力と限界を完全に知っている場合だけであると信じます。 特にこの仕組みはいつ消費者が多部分物体の特定の部品を必要とするかを生産者が知っていることに非常に依存しています。 しかし消費者は可能性としては全然違った働き方をしているかも知れませんし、 違った消費者は違ったものを違った時期に必要とするかもしれません。 この仕組みは特定の消費者の需要を生産者が調べて調整する方法を提供していません。
Alternative mechanisms, such as a protocol based on BEEP which is capable of bidirectional communication between the producer and consumer, should be considered when the capabilities of the consumer are not known by the producer.
生産者が消費者の能力を知らない時には別の仕組み、 例えば生産者と消費者が双方向で通信できる BEEP に基づいたプロトコルを検討するべきです。
The Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type, like the Multipart/Related content-type, provides a mechanism for representing objects that consist of multiple components. An Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity contains a sequence of chunks. Each chunk contains a MIME message or a part of a MIME message. Each MIME message represents a component of the compound object, just as a body part of a Multipart/Related entity represents a component. With a Multipart/Related entity, a body part and its reference in some other body part may be separated by many octets. With an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity, a message and its reference in some other message can be made quite close by chunking the message containing the reference. For example, if a long message contains references to images and the producer does not know of the need for each image until it generates the reference, then Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed allows the consumer to process the reference to the image and the image before it consumes the entire long message. This ability is important in printing and scanning applications. This document defines the Application/Vnd.pwg- multiplexed content-type. It also provides examples of its use.
1. Introduction....................................................2 2. Terminology.....................................................7 3. Details.........................................................9 3.1 Syntax of Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed Contents...........10 3.2 Parameters for Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed...............12 3.2.1 The "type" Parameter.......................................12 3.2.2 Syntax.....................................................12 4. Handling Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed Entities..............12 5. Examples.......................................................13 5.1 Example With Multipart/Related...............................14 5.2 Examples with Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed................15 5.2.1 Example Where Each Chunk Has a Complete Message............15 5.2.2 Example of Chunking the Root Message.......................17 5.2.3 Example of Chunking the Several Messages...................18 5.2.4 Example of Chunks with Empty Payloads......................20 6. Security Considerations........................................22 7. Registration Information for Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed...22 8. Acknowledgments................................................23 9. References.....................................................23 10. Author's Address..............................................24 11. Full Copyright Statement......................................25
The simple MIME content-types, such as "text/plain" provide a mechanism for representing a simple object, such as a text document. The Multipart/Related [RFC2387] content-type provides a mechanism for representing a compound object, such as a text document with two gif images.
A compound object consists of multiple components. One such component is the root component, which contains references to other components of the compound object. These components may, in turn, contain references to other components of the compound object. For example, a compound object could consist of a root html text component and two gif image components -- each referenced by the root component.
A compound object and a component are both abstractions. For transmission over the wire or writing to storage, each needs a representation. A "Multipart/Related entity" is one possible representation of a compound object, and a "body part" is one possible representation of a component.
However, the Multipart/Related content-type is not a good solution for applications that require each component to be close to its corresponding reference in the root component. This document defines a new MIME content-type Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed that provides a better solution for some applications. The Application/Vnd.pwg- multiplexed content-type, like the Multipart/Related content-type, provides a common mechanism for representing a compound object. A Multipart/Related entity consists of a sequence of body parts separated by boundary strings. Each body part represents a component of the compound object. An Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity consists of a sequence of chunks, each of whose length is specified in the chunk header. Each chunk contains a message or a part of a message. Each message represents a component of the compound object. Chunks from different messages can be interleaved. HTTP is the typical transport for an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity over the wire. An Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity could be stored in a Microsoft HTML (message/rfc822) file whose suffix is .mht.
The following paragraphs contain three examples of applications. For each application, there is a discussion of its solution with the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type, the Multipart/Related content-type and BEEP [RFC3080].
Example 1: a printing application. A Producer creates a print stream that consists of a very long series of page descriptions, each of which references one or more images. The root component is the long series of page descriptions. An image may be referenced from multiple pages descriptions, and there is a mechanism to indicate when there are no additional references to an image (i.e., the image is out of scope). The Producer does not know what images to include with a page until it generates that page. The Consumer is presumed to have enough storage to hold all in-scope images and enough of the root component to process at least one page. The Producer doesn't need any knowledge of the Consumer's storage capabilities in order to create an entity that the Consumer can successfully process. However, the Producer needs to be prudent about the number of images that are in-scope at any time. Of course, a malicious Producer may try to exceed the storage capabilities of the Consumer, and the Consumer must guard against such entities (see section 6). Here are ways to represent this compound object.
With the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type, each image
is a message and the root component is a message. The Producer
breaks the root component message into chunks with each image
message occurring shortly before its first reference. When the
Consumer encounters a reference, it can assume that it has already
received the referenced image in an earlier chunk. With the Multipart/Related content-type, each image must either
precede or follow the root component. If images follow the root component, the Consumer must read all
remaining pages of the root component before it can print the
first page that references such images. The Consumer must wait
to print such a page until it has received the entire root
component, and the Consumer may not have the space to hold the
remaining pages. If images precede the root component, the Producer must
determine and send all such images before it sends the root
component. The Consumer must, in the best case, wait some
additional time before it receives the first page of the root
component. In the worse case, the Consumer may not have enough
storage for all the images. The Multipart/Related solution is not a good solution because
of the wait time and because, in some cases, the Consumer may
not have sufficient storage for all of the images. With BEEP, the images and root component can be sent in separate
channels. The Producer can push each image when it encounters the
first reference or the Consumer can request it when it encounters
the first reference. The over-the-wire stream of octets is
similar to an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity. However,
there is a substantial difference in behavior for a printing
application. With the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-
type, the Producer puts each image message before its first
reference so that when the Consumer encounters a reference, the
image is guaranteed to be present on the printer. With BEEP, if
the Consumer pulls the image, the Consumer has to wait while the
image comes over the network. If the Producer pushes the image,
BEEP may put the image message after its first reference and the
Consumer may still have to wait for the image. A high-speed
printer should not have to risk waiting for images; otherwise it
cannot run at full speed.Example 2: a scanning (fax-like) application. The Producer is a scanner, which scans pages and sends them along with a vnd.pwg- xhtml-print+xml root component that contains references to each page image. Each page is referenced exactly once in the root-component. The Consumer is a printer that consumes vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml entities and their attachments. That is, the Consumer is not limited to print jobs that come from scanners. A Producer and Consumer are each presumed to have enough storage to hold a few page images and most if not all of the root component. The Producer doesn't need any additional knowledge of the Consumer's storage capabilities in order to create an entity that the Consumer can successfully process. Of course, a malicious Producer may try to exceed the storage capabilities of the Consumer and the Consumer must guard against such entities (see section 6). Here are ways to represent this compound object.
With the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type, each page
image is a message and the root component is a message. The
Producer breaks the root component message into chunks with each
image message just before or just after its reference. With the Multipart/Related content-type, the images cannot precede
the root component because the Consumer might not have enough
space to store them until the root component arrived. In this
case, the printer could fail to print the job correctly and the
Producer might not know. Therefore the images must follow the
root component, and the Producer must scan all pages before it can
send the first page. At the very least, this solution delays the
printing of the pages until all have been scanned. In the worst
case, the Producer does not have sufficient memory to buffer the
images, and the job fails. With BEEP, the issues are the same as in the previous example,
except that speed is not as important in this case. So BEEP is a
viable alternative for this example.Example 3: a printing application. A Producer creates a print stream that consists of a series of pages, each of which references zero or more images. Each image is referenced exactly once. The Producer does not know what images to include with a page until it generates that page, and the Producer doesn't know the layout details; the Consumer handles layout. The Producer has enough storage to send the root component and all images. However, it may not have enough storage to hold the entire root component or all octets of any of the images. The Consumer is presumed to have enough storage to render the root component and to render each image. It may not have enough storage to hold the entire root component or all octets of any of the images. The Producer doesn't determine the Consumer's storage capabilities. Rather it arranges the components so that the Consumer is mostly likely to succeed. Of course, a malicious Producer may try to exceed the storage capabilities of the Consumer, and the Consumer must guard against such entities (see section 6). Here are ways to represent this compound object.
With the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type, each image
is a message and the root component is a message. The Producer
breaks the root component message into chunks with each image
message just after its reference. The references appear first so
that the Consumer knows the location of each image before it
processes the image. This strategy minimizes storage needs for
Producer and Consumer and provides a good strategy in case of
failure. Here are the cases to consider. a) When the document consists of vertically aligned blocks where
each block contains either lines of text or a single image, the
sequence of chunks is the same as the sequence of printable
blocks, thus minimizing Consumer buffering needs. b) When a block can contain N side-by-side images, the Consumer
must buffer N-1 images unless the Producer interleaves the
images. If the Producer doesn't interleave the images, and the
Consumer runs out of storage before it has received N-1,
images, it can print what it has and print the remaining images
below; not what the Producer intended, but better than nothing.
If the Producer interleaves images, and the Consumer runs out
of storage before it has received the bands of N images, the
Consumer would print portions of images interleaved with
portions of other images. So, a Producer should not interleave
images. c) When a block contains text and image side-by-side (i.e., run-
around text), there are additional buffering requirements.
When the Consumer processes the text that follows the
reference, it will place some of it next to the image (run-
around text) and will place the remaining text after the image.
The Producer doesn't know where the run-around ends, and thus
doesn't know where to end the text chunk and start the image
chunk. If the Producer ends the text too soon, then the
Consumer either has to process the entire image (if it has
enough storage) in order to get the remaining run-around text,
or it ends the run-around text prematurely. If the Producer
ends the text too late, then the Consumer may have to store too
much text and possibly put the image later than the Producer
requested. Because text data requires significantly less
storage than image data, a good strategy for Producer is to err
on the side of sending too much rather than too little text
before the image data. d) When a block contains text and multiple side-by-side images,
the problem becomes a combination of items b) and c) above. The Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type can be made to
work in this example, but a Consumer must have failure strategies
and the result may not be quite what the producer intended. With
the Multipart/Related content-type, the images cannot precede the
root component because the Consumer might not have enough space to
store them until the root component arrived. Also, the images
cannot follow the root component because the Consumer might not
have enough storage for the root component before the first image
arrives. So the Multipart/Related content-type is not an
acceptable solution for this example. With BEEP, the Producer can send the root component on channel 1
and the Consumer can request images on even numbered channels when
it encounters a reference. This solution allows more flexibility
than the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type. If there
are side-by-side images and/or run-around text, the Consumer can
request bands of each image or run-around text over separate
channels.In all of these examples, the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type provides a much better solution than Multipart/Related. However, it is evenly matched with BEEP. For applications where speed is important and ordering of the chunks is important in order to avoid printing delays, the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type is best. For applications, where the Consumer needs more control over the ordering of received octets, BEEP is best.
This document uses some of the MIME terms that are defined in [RFC2045]. The following are the terms used in this document:
Entity: the headers and the content. In this document, the term
"entity" describes all the octets that represent a compound
object. Message: an entity as in [RFC2045]. In this document, the term
"message" describes all octets that represent one component of a
compound object. That is, it has MIME headers and content. Body Part: an entity inside a multipart. That is, a body part is
the headers and content (i.e., octets) between the multipart
boundary strings not including the CRLF at the beginning and end.
This document never uses "entity" to mean "body part". Headers: the initial lines of an entity, message or body part. An
empty line (i.e., two adjacent CRLFs) terminates the headers.
Sometimes the term "MIME header" is used instead of just "header". Content: the part of an entity, message or body part that follows
the headers (i.e., follows the two adjacent CRLFs). The content
of a body part ends at the octet preceding the CRLF before the
multipart boundary string. The content of a message ends at the
octets specified by the length field in the Chunk Header.This document uses the following additional terms.
Chunk: a chunk of data, consisting of a chunk header, a chunk
payload and a CRLF. Chunk Header: the first line of a chunk. The line consists of the
"CHK" keyword, the message number, the length and the continuation
indicator, each separated by a single space character (ASCII 32).
A CRLF terminates the line. Each message in an
Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity has a message number that
normally differs from the message numbers of all other messages in
the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity. The message number 0
is reserved for final Chunk Header in the Application/Vnd.pwg-
multiplexed entity. Chunk Payload: the octets between the Chunk Header and the Chunk
Header of the next chunk. The length field in the header's length
field specifies the number of octets in the Chunk Payload. The
Chunk Payload is either a complete message or a part of a message.
The continuation field in the header specifies whether the chunk
is the last chunk of the message. CRLF: the sequence of octets corresponding to the two US-ASCII
characters CR (decimal value 13) and LF (decimal value 10) which,
taken together, in this order, denote a line break. A CRLF
terminates each chunk in order to provide visual separation from
the next chunk header. Consumer: the software that receives and processes a MIME entity,
e.g., software in a printer or software that reads a file. Producer: the software that creates and sends a MIME entity, e.g.,
software in a scanner or software that writes a file.The Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type, like Multipart/Related, is intended to represent a compound object consisting of several inter-related components. This document does not specify the representation of these relationships, but [RFC2557] contains examples of Multipart/Related entities that use the Content-ID and Content-Location headers to identify body parts and URLs (including the "cid" URL) to reference body parts. It is expected that Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entities would use the patterns described in [RFC2557].
For an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity, there is one parameter for the Content-Type header. It is a "type" parameter, and it is like the "type" parameter for the Multipart/Related content-type. The value of the "type" parameter must be the content-type of the root message and it effectively specifies the type of the compound object.
An Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity contains a sequence of chunks. Each chunk consists of a chunk header, a chunk payload and a CRLF.
- The chunk header consists of a "CHK" keyword followed by the
message number, the chunk payload length, whether the chunk is
the last chunk of a message and, finally, a CRLF. The length
field removes the need for boundary strings that Multipart uses.
(See section 3.1 for the syntax of a chunk header). - The chunk payload is a sequence of octets that is either a
complete message or a part of a message.- The CRLF provides visual separation from the following chunk.
Each message represents a component of the compound object, and a message is intended to have exactly the same representation, octet for octet, as a body part of a Multipart/Related entity that represents the same component. When a message is split across multiple chunks, the chunks need not be contiguous.
The contents of an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity have the following properties:
1) The first chunk contains a complete or partial message that (in
either case) represents the root component of the compound
object. 2) Additional chunks contain messages or partial messages that
represent some component of the compound object. 3) The final chunk's header contains a message number of 0, a
length of 0 and a last-chunk-of-message mark (i.e., the chunk
header line is "CHK 0 0 LAST"). The final chunk contains no
chunk payload. 4) A message can be broken into multiple parts and each break can
occur anywhere within the message. Each part of the message is
zero or more bytes in length and each part of the message is
the contents of its own chunk. The order of the chunks within
the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity must be the same as
the order of the parts within the message. 5) A message represents a component of a compound object, and it
is intended that it have exactly the same representation, octet
for octet, as a body part of a Multipart/Related entity that
represents the same component. In particular, the message may
contain a Content-Type header to specify the content-type of
the message content. Also, the message may contain a Content-
ID header and/or Content-Location header to identify a message
that is referenced from within another message. If a message
contains no Content-Type header, then the message has an
implicit content-type of "text/plain; charset=us-ascii", cf.
[RFC2045].See section 4 for a discussion displaying an Application/Vnd.pwg- multiplexed entity.
The ABNF [RFC2234] for the contents of an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity is:
application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed 実体の内容の
ABNF は次の通りです。
contents = *chunk finalChunk chunk = header payload CRLF header = "CHK" SP messageNumber SP length SP isMore CRLF messageNumber = 1..2147483647 length = 0..2147483647 isMore = "MORE" / "LAST" payload = *OCTET finalChunk = finalHeader CRLF finalHeader = "CHK" SP "0" SP "0" SP "LAST" CRLF
The messageNumber field specifies the message that the chunk is associated with. See the end of this section for more details.
messageNumber 欄は塊が関連付けられるメッセージを指定します。
詳細はこの章の終わりをご覧下さい。
The length field specifies the number of octets in the chunk payload (represented in ABNF as "payload"). The first octet of the chunk payload is the one immediately following the LF (i.e., final octet) of the chunk header. The last octet of the chunk payload is the one immediately preceding the two octets CRLF that end the chunk.
length 欄は塊積荷 (ABNF では payload)
のオクテット数を指定します。塊積荷の最初のオクテットは塊頭部の後の
LF (最後のオクテット) の直後のオクテットです。
塊積荷の最後のオクテットは塊の終わりの2オクテット CRLF
の直前のオクテットです。
The isMore field has a value of "LAST" for the last chunk of a message and "MORE" for all other chunks of a message.
isMore 欄は値が LAST ならメッセージの最後の塊を表し、
MORE ならメッセージの最後以外の塊を表します。
Normally each message in an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity has a unique message number, and a message consists of the concatenation of all the octets from the one or more chunks with the same message number. The isMore field of the chunk header of the last chunk of each message must have a value of "LAST" and the isMore field of the chunk header of all other chunks must have a value of "MORE".
通常 application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed
実体の各メッセージは固有のメッセージ番号を持ち、
メッセージは同じメッセージ番号の1つ以上の塊のオクテットすべての連結から成ります。
各メッセージの最後の塊の塊頭部の isMore 欄の値は
LAST でなければなりませんし、他の全ての塊の塊頭部の
isMore 欄の値は MORE でなければなりません。
Two or more messages may have the same message number, though such reuse of message numbers is not recommended. The chunks with the same message number represent a sequence of one or more messages where the isMore field of the chunk header of the last chunk of each message has a value of "LAST". All chunks whose isMore field of the chunk header has the value of "MORE" belong to the same message as the next chunk (in sequence) whose isMore field of the chunk header has the value of "LAST". In other words, if two messages have the same message number, the last chunk of the first message must occur before the first chunk of the second message.
2つ以上のメッセージが同じ番号であっても構いませんが、
そのようなメッセージ番号の再利用は推奨しません。
同じメッセージ番号の塊は、各メッセージの最後の塊の塊頭部の
isMore 欄の値が LAST であるような
1つ以上のメッセージの列を表します。塊頭部の isMore
欄の値が MORE である塊はすべて塊頭部の isMore
欄の値が LAST である (順番的に) 次の塊と同じメッセージに属します。
別の言葉で言えば、2つのメッセージが同じメッセージ番号を持つなら、
最初のメッセージの最後の塊は次のメッセージの最初の塊の前に来なければなりません。
The behavior of the Consumer is undefined if the final Chunk (i.e., the Chunk whose chunk header is "CHK 0 0 LAST") occurs before the last chunk of every message occurs.
全メッセージの最後の塊が出現する前に最後の塊 (すなわち塊頭部が
CHK 0 0 LAST である塊) が出現した場合、消費者の動作は未定義です。
Two adjacent chunks usually have different message numbers. However, they may have the same message number. If two adjacent chunks have the same message number, the two chunks could be combined into a single chunk, but they need not be combined.
2つの隣接する塊は通常異なるメッセージ番号を持ちます。しかし、 両者が同じメッセージ番号を持っていても構いません。 2つの隣接する塊が同じメッセージ番号を持つ場合は、 2つの塊を結合して1つの塊にすることができますが、 結合する必要はありません。
The number of octets in a chunk payload may be zero, and an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity may contain any number of chunks with zero octets of chunk payload. For example, the last chunk of each message may contain zero octets for programming convenience. As another example, suppose that a particular compound object format requires that referenced messages occur before the root message. This document requires that the first chunk of an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity contain the root message or a part of it. So, the first chunk contains a chunk payload of zero octets with the first octet of the root message in the second chunk. That is, all of the message headers of the root message are in the second chunk. As an extreme but unlikely example, it would be possible to have a message broken into ten chunks with zero octet chunk payloads in all chunks except for chunks 4 and 7.
塊積荷のオクテット数は零でも構わず、application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed
実体は何個でも零オクテットの塊積荷の塊を含めて構いません。
例えば、各メッセージの最後の塊はプログラムの都合で零オクテットにして構いません。
別の例として、特定の合成物体書式で参照されたメッセージが根メッセージの前に出現する必要があるとします。
この文書は application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed
実体の最初の塊が根メッセージを含むか、その一部であることを要求しています。
ですから、最初の塊は零オクテットの塊積荷を載せ、
2番目の塊に根メッセージの最初のオクテットを含めます。つまり、
根メッセージのメッセージ頭部はすべて2番目の塊に入れます。
極端な例ですが、メッセージを10個の塊に分けて4番目と
7番目の塊以外はすべて零オクテットにすることも可能です。
This section defines additional parameters for
Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed.
この節は application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed
の追加の引数を定義します。
The type parameter must be specified. Its value is the content-type of the "root" message. It permits a Consumer to determine the content-type without reference to the enclosed message. If the value of the type parameter differs from the content-type of the root message, the Consumer's behavior is undefined.
type 引数は指定しなければなりません。
値は根
メッセージの内容型です。消費者は囲まれたメッセージを参照しないで内容型を決定できます。
type 引数の値が根メッセージの内容型と異なる場合、
消費者の動作は未定義です。
The syntax for "parameter" is:
parameter の構文は次の通りです。
parameter := "type" "=" type "/" subtype ; cf. [RFC2045]
The application that handles the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity has the responsibility for displaying the entity. However, Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed messages may contain Content- Disposition headers that provide suggestions for the display and storage of a message, and in some cases the application may pay attention to such headers.
As a reminder, Content-Disposition headers [RFC1806] allow the sender to suggest presentation styles for MIME messages. There are two presentation styles, 'inline' and 'attachment'. Content-Disposition headers have a parameter for specifying a suggested file name for storage.
There are three cases to consider for handling Application/Vnd.pwg- multiplexed entities:
a) The Consumer recognizes Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed and the
content-type of the root. The Consumer determines the
presentation style for the compound object; it handles the
display of the components of the compound object in the context
of the compound object. In this case, the Content-Disposition
header information is redundant or even misleading, and the
Consumer shall ignore them for purposes of display. The
Consumer may use the suggested file name if the entity is
stored. b) The Consumer recognizes Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed, but
not the content-type of the root. The Consumer will give the
user the choice of suppressing the entire Application/Vnd.pwg-
multiplexed entity or treating the Application/Vnd.pwg-
multiplexed entity as a Multipart/Mixed entity where each
message is a body part of the Multipart/Mixed entity. In this
case (where the entity is not suppressed), the Consumer may
find the Content-Disposition information useful for displaying
each body part of the resulting Multipart/Mixed entity. If a
body part has no Content-Disposition header, the Consumer
should display the body part as an attachment. c) The Consumer does not recognize Application/Vnd.pwg-
multiplexed. The Consumer treats the Application/Vnd.pwg-
multiplexed entity as opaque and can do nothing with it.This section contains five examples. Each example is a different representation of the same compound object. The compound object has four components: an XHTML text component and three image components. The images are encoded in binary. The string "<<binary data>>" and "<<part of binary data>>" in each example represents all or part of the binary data of each image. Two of the images are potentially side by side and the third image is displayed later in the document. All of the images are identified by Content-Id and two of the images are also identified by a Content-Location. One of the images references the Content-Location.
The first example shows a Multipart/Related representation of the compound object in order to provide a representation that the reader is familiar with. The remaining examples show Application/Vnd.pwg- multiplexed representations of the same compound object. In the second example, each chunk contains a whole message. In the third example, the XHTML message is split across 3 chunks, and these chunks are interleaved among the three image messages. In the fourth example, the XHTML message is split across 4 chunks, and the two side-by-side images are each split across two chunks. The XHTML chunks are interleaved among the image chunks. In the fifth example, there are chunks with empty payloads and adjacent chunks with the same message number.
The last example may seem to address useless cases, but sometimes it is easier to write software if these cases are allowed. For example, when a buffer fills, it may be easiest to write a chunk and not worry if the previous chunk had the same message number. Likewise, it may be easiest to end a message with an empty chunk. Finally, the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed content-type requires that the first chunk be part of the root message. Sometimes, it is more convenient for the Producer if the root message starts after the occurrence of some attachments. Since a chunk can be empty, the first chunk of the root message can be empty, i.e., it doesn't even contain any headers. Then the first chunk contains a part of the root message, but the Producer doesn't generate any octets for that chunk.
Each body part of the Multipart/Related entity and each message of the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity contain a content- disposition, which the Consumer uses according to the rules in section 4. Note the location of the content-disposition headers in the examples.
In this example, the compound object is represented as a Multipart/Related entity so that the reader can compare it with the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entities.
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="boundary-example";
type="text/xhtml+xml"--boundary-example Content-ID: <49568.44343xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml Content-Disposition: inline
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1">
<body>
<p>some text
<img src="cid:49568.45876xxx@foo.com"/>
<img src="http://foo.com/images/image2.gif"/>
some more text after the images
</p>
<p>some more text without images
</p>
<p>some more text
<img src="cid:49568.47333xxx@foo.com"/>
</p>
<p>some final text
</p>
</body>
</html>
--boundary-example
Content-ID: <49568.45876xxx@foo.com>
Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image1.gif
Content-Type: image/gif
Content-Disposition: attachment<<binary data>> --boundary-example Content-ID: <49568.46000xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image2.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>> --boundary-example Content-ID: <49568.47333xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>> --boundary-example--
The four examples in this section show Application/Vnd.pwg- multiplexed representations of the same compound object. Note that each CRLF is represented by a visual line break.
In this example, the compound object is represented as an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity. Each chunk contains an entire message, i.e., none of the messages are split across multiple chunks. Each message in this example is identical to the corresponding body part in the preceding Multipart/Relate example.
Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed;
type="application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml"CHK 1 550 LAST Content-ID: <49568.44343xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml Content-Disposition: inline
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1">
<body>
<p>some text
<img src="cid:49568.45876xxx@foo.com"/>
<img src="http://foo.com/images/image2.gif"/>
some more text after the images
</p>
<p>some more text without images
</p>
<p>some more text
<img src="cid:49568.47333xxx@foo.com"/>
</p>
<p>some final text
</p>
</body>
</html>CHK 2 6346 LAST Content-ID: <49568.45876xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image1.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>> CHK 3 6401 LAST Content-ID: <49568.46000xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image2.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>> CHK 4 7603 LAST Content-ID: <49568.47333xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>> CHK 0 0 LAST
In this example, the compound object is represented as an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity. The message containing the XHTML component is split into 3 pieces so that the reference to an image is as close as possible to the beginning of the chunk. The chunk containing the referenced image message occurs just before the chunk with the reference. This minimizes the distance between reference and referenced message.
Note that there are other possible arrangements (see the third example in section 5.2.3). For example, a sender could split the XHTML message so that the reference to an image is as close as possible to the end of the chunk. Then the chunk containing the referenced image message should occur just after the chunk with the reference. The sender could mix this strategy with the one used in this example.
Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed;
type=" application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml"CHK 1 267 MORE Content-ID: <49568.44343xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml Content-Disposition: inline
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1">
<body>
<p>some textCHK 2 6346 LAST Content-ID: <49568.45876xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image1.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>> CHK 3 6401 LAST Content-ID: <49568.46000xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image2.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>>
CHK 1 166 MORE
<img src="cid:49568.45876xxx@foo.com"/>
<img src="http://foo.com/images/image2.gif"/>
some more text after the images
</p>
<p>some more text without images
</p>
<p>some more textCHK 4 7603 LAST Content-ID: <49568.47333xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>>
CHK 1 80 LAST
<img src="cid:49568.47333xxx@foo.com"/>
</p>
<p>some final text
</p>
</body>
</html>CHK 0 0 LAST
In this example, the compound object is represented as an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity. The message containing the XHTML component is split into 4 pieces so that the reference to an image is as close as possible to either the beginning or the end of the chunk. The references to the first and second images closely follow the referenced images. The reference to the third image closely precedes the referenced image. This minimizes the distance between reference and referenced message. In addition, the first two image messages are split into two chunks each.
Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed;
type=" application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml"CHK 1 303 MORE Content-ID: <49568.44343xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml Content-Disposition: inline
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1">
<body>
<p>some textCHK 2 184 MORE Content-ID: <49568.45876xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image1.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<part of binary data>> CHK 3 200 MORE Content-ID: <49568.46000xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image2.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<part of binary data>>
CHK 1 78 MORE
<img src="cid:49568.45876xxx@foo.com"/>
<img src="http://foo.com/images/image2.gif"/> CHK 2 6162 LAST
<<part of binary data>>
CHK 3 6201 LAST
<<part of binary data>>
CHK 1 127 MORE
some more text after the images
</p>
<p>some more text without images
</p>
<p>some more text
<img src="cid:49568.47333xxx@foo.com"/>CHK 4 7603 LAST Content-ID: <49568.47333xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>>
CHK 1 41 LAST
</p>
<p>some final text
</p>
</body>
</html>CHK 0 0 LAST
This example is identical to the previous one, except that some chunks have a chunk payload of zero octets. The root message starts with a chunk whose payload is empty and every message ends with a chunk whose payload is empty. This example also shows two adjacent chunks that are from the same message. These two chunks could be coalesced into a single chunk, but they might be kept separate for programming convenience.
Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-multiplexed;
type=" application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml"CHK 1 0 MORE
CHK 2 184 MORE Content-ID: <49568.45876xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image1.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<part of binary data>> CHK 3 200 MORE Content-ID: <49568.46000xxx@foo.com> Content-Location: http://foo.com/images/image2.gif Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<part of binary data>> CHK 1 303 MORE Content-ID: <49568.44343xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: application/vnd.pwg-xhtml-print+xml Content-Disposition: inline
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1">
<body>
<p>some textCHK 2 6162 MORE <<part of binary data>> CHK 3 6201 MORE <<part of binary data>> CHK 2 0 LAST
CHK 3 0 LAST
CHK 1 78 MORE
<img src="cid:49568.45876xxx@foo.com"/>
<img src="http://foo.com/images/image2.gif"/>CHK 4 7603 MORE Content-ID: <49568.47333xxx@foo.com> Content-Type: image/gif Content-Disposition: attachment
<<binary data>> CHK 4 0 LAST
CHK 1 127 MORE
some more text after the images
</p>
<p>some more text without images
</p>
<p>some more text
<img src="cid:49568.47333xxx@foo.com"/> CHK 1 41 MORE
</p>
<p>some final text
</p>
</body>
</html>CHK 1 0 LAST
CHK 0 0 LAST
There are security considerations that pertain to each message of an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity. Those security considerations are described by the document that defines the content-type of the message. They are not addressed in this document.
There are also security considerations that pertain to the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity as a whole. A Producer that is buggy or malicious may send an Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity that could cause a Consumer to request more storage than it has, even if it has a large amount of storage. A Consumer must be able to deal gracefully with the following scenarios and combinations of them:
- The chunks of one or more messages are separated by a very large
number of octets. In the extreme case some or all of the
messages don't terminate, i.e., they don't contain a closing
chunk.
- A very large number of messages are started and interleaved
before their final chunk occurs.
- A message contains one or more references to other messages that
never occur or don't occur for a large number of octets.
- A very large number of referenced messages occur before the
Consumer knows that it can discard them.The following form is copied from RFC 1590, Appendix A.
To: iana@iana.org
Subject: Registration of new Media Type
application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed
Media Type name: Application
Media subtype name: Vendor Tree - vnd.pwg-multiplexed
Required parameters: Type, a media type/subtype.
Optional parameters: No optional parameters
Encoding considerations: Each message of an
Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity can be
encoded in any manner allowed by the Content-
Type of the message. However, using the
reasoning of Multipart, the
Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed entity cannot
be encoded. Otherwise, a message would be
encoded twice, once at the message level and
once at the Application/Vnd.pwg-multiplexed
level.
Security considerations: See section 6 (Security
Considerations) of RFC 3391.
Published specification: RFC 3391.
Person & email address to contact for further information: Robert Herriot
706 Colorado Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94303
USA
Phone: 1-650-327-4466
Fax: 1-650-327-4466
EMail: bob@herriot.comThe author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of: Ugo Corda, Dave Crocker, Melinda Sue Grant, Graham Klyne, Carl-Uno Manros, Larry Masinter, Ira McDonald, Chris Newman, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen and Dale R. Worley. In particular, Chris Newman provided invaluable help.
[RFC1806] Troost, R. and S. Dorner, "Communicating Presentation
Information in Internet Messages: The Content-Disposition
Header", RFC 1806, June 1995. [RFC1873] Levinson, E. and J. Clark, "Message/External-Body Content-
ID Access Type", RFC 1873, December 1995.
Levinson, E., "Message/External-Body Content-ID Access
Type", Work in Progress. [RFC2045] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996. [RFC2046] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046,
November 1996. [RFC2234] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for
SyntaxSpecifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997. [RFC2387] Levinson, E., "The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type",
RFC 2387, August 1998. [RFC2392] Levinson, E., "Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource
Locators", RFC 2392, August 1998. [RFC2557] Palme, J., "MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such
as HTML (MHTML", RFC 2557, March 1999. [RFC2822] Resnick, P., Editor, "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822,
April 2001. [RFC3080] Rose, M., "The Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol Core",
RFC 3080, March 2001.Robert Herriot 706 Colorado Ave. Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA
Phone: 1-650-327-4466 Fax: 1-650-327-4466 EMail: bob@herriot.com
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
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