On February 10, draft-harrison-email-tracking-00.txt was announced on the ID-announce mailing list. Assuming that the draft is not intended to be a precursor of an April 1 RFC, I have several comments. Since the draft mentions no place for public discussion, I am copying the IETF discussion list, with a suggestion that any public discussion take place there, unless and until a more suitable venue is proposed. First, the draft seems to be in far too premature a state to warrant detailed commentary, so I'll touch on several issues in general terms. o The subject matter of the draft appears to be covered more appropriately and far more comprehensively by RFCs 3885 through 3888. I believe that publication as an RFC would be harmful to the IETF work done in the MSGTRK WG. o It proposes a header field, which it confusingly calls a "header", but provides no ABNF and no textual indication of syntax or semantics. o It refers to an "originator", but does not specify the source of that information, nor what should happen if the SMTP envelope return path or other source of "originator" is a null path. o It mentions "return receipt", but provides neither a normative nor informative reference. o It purports to turn the "only human-readable" Subject field comprised of unstructured text into a repository for keywords in a specific language, with no provision for localization or registration of keywords. o The proposed field uses a portion of the header field namespace reserved for MIME extension fields, but the field is not claimed as a MIME extension field, nor is there is either a normative or informative reference to the MIME specifications. o No header field registration information is provided. o Overall, the proposal is so nebulous as to defy any attempt at implementation. o There is no discussion of interaction with deployed mechanisms, including gateways (e.g. to/from X.400), message/partial fragmentation, or resent messages. o The draft lacks the mandatory Security Considerations section. o Although the draft uses the English-language word "TRACK" in a message header field, there is no provision for internationalization or localization and no Internationalization Considerations section. o Although a keyword is proposed, there is no IANA Considerations section. o There is a single "References" section, improperly formatted, and with no indication of whether the single reference (N.B. not plural) listed is normative or informative. References: STD11 Crocker, D., "Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages", STD 11, RFC 822, August 1982. RFC1958 Carpenter, B., "Architectural Principles of the Internet", RFC 1958, June 1996. RFC2026 Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996. 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. RFC2277 Alvestrand, H., "IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages", BCP 18, RFC 2277, January 1998. RFC2418 Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998. RFC2822 Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April 2001. RFC3864 Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864, September 2004. RFC3885 Allman, E. and T. Hansen, "SMTP Service Extension for Message Tracking", RFC 3885, September 2004. RFC3886 Allman, E., "An Extensible Message Format for Message Tracking Responses", RFC 3886, September 2004. RFC3887 Hansen, T., "Message Tracking Query Protocol", RFC 3887, September 2004. RFC3888 Hansen, T., "Message Tracking Model and Requirements", RFC 3888, September 2004. Malamud05 Malamud, c., "Labels in Subject Headers Considered Ineffective At Best", draft-malamud-subject-line, Work in progress, January 2005. Lilly05 Lilly, B., "Implementer-friendly Specification of Message and MIME-Part Header Fields and Field Components", draft-lilly-field-specification, Work in progress, February 2005. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf