Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/drafts/draft_ietf_j_p/draft-ietf-mixer-fax-01.txt

Text File | 1997-09-18 | 11KB | 379 lines

draft              A MIME body part for Group 3 FAX             Nov 95


                         A MIME body part for FAX

                     Mon Aug 19 14:32:21 MET DST 1996


                         Harald Tveit Alvestrand
                                 UNINETT
                      [e-mail]






    Status of this Memo

    This draft document is being circulated for comment.



    Please send comments to the author, or to the MIXER list <ietf-
    [e-mail]>.

    The following text is required by the Internet-draft rules:

    This document is an Internet Draft.  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. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by
    other documents at any time.  It is not appropriate to use
    Internet Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than
    as a "working draft" or "work in progress."

    Please check the I-D abstract listing contained in each Internet
    Draft directory to learn the current status of this or any other
    Internet Draft.

    The file name of this version is draft-ietf-mixer-fax-01.txt








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    1.  Introduction

    This document contains the definitions, originally contained in
    RFC 1494, on how to carry CCITT G3Fax in MIME, and how to
    translate it to its X.400 representation.

    This document is an Experimental standard; if it turns out to be
    useful and widely deployed, it can be moved onto the standards
    track.

    NOTE: At the moment, this format does not seem appropriate for a
    "general purpose image format for the Internet", if such a beast
    can exist. It exists only to carry information that is already in
    G3 Fax format, and may be usefully converted to other formats when
    used in specific contexts.


    2.  The image/g3fax content-type

    This content-type is defined to carry G3 Facsimile byte streams.

    In general, a G3Fax image contains 3 pieces of information:

     (1)   A set of flags indicating the particular coding scheme.
           CCITT Recommendation T.30 defines how the flags are
           transmitted over telephones.  In this medium, the flags are
           carried as parameters in the MIME content-type header
           field.

     (2)   A structure that divides the bits into pages.  CCITT
           recommendation T.4 describes a "return to command mode"
           string; this is used here to indicate page breaks.

     (3)   For each page, a sequence of bits that form the encoding of
           the image.  CCITT recommendation T.4 defines the bit image
           format.  This is used without change.  The highest bit of
           the first byte is the first bit of the T.4 bitstream.

    2.1.  G3Fax Parameters

    The following parameters are defined:








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     (1)   page-length - possible values: A4, B4 and Unlimited

     (2)   page-width - possible values: A3, A4, B4

     (3)   encoding - possible values: 1-dimensional, 2-dimensional,
           Uncompressed

     (4)   resolution - possible values: Fine, Coarse

     (5)   DCS - a bit string, represented in Base64.

     (6)   pages - an integer, giving the number of pages in the
           document

    If nothing is specified, the default parameter settings are:

      page-length=A4
      page-width=A4
      encoding=1-dimensional
      resolution=Coarse

    It is possible (but misleading) to view the representation of
    these values as single-bit flags. They correspond to the following
    bits of the T.30 control string and X.400 G3FacsimileParameters:

    Parameter               T.30 bit        X.400 bit

    page-length=A4             no bit set
    page-length=B4          19              21
    page-length=Unlimited   20              20

    page-width=A4              no bit set
    page-width=A3           18              22
    page-width=B4           17              23

    encoding=1-dimensional     no bit set
    encoding=2-dimensional  16              8
    encoding=Uncompressed   26              30

    resolution=Coarse          no bit set
    resolution=Fine         15              9

    The reason for the different bit numbers is that X.400 counts bits
    in an octet from the MSB down to the LSB, while T.30 uses the





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    opposite numbering scheme.

    If any bit but these are set in the Device Control String, the DCS
    parameter should be supplied.


    2.2.  Content Encoding

    X.400 defines the g3-facsimile data stream as a SEQUENCE of BIT
    STRINGs. Each BIT STRING is a page of facsimile image data,
    encoded as defined by Recommendation T.4.  The following content
    encoding is reversible between MIME and X.400 and ensures that
    page breaks are honored in the MIME representation.

    An EOL is defined as a bit sequence of

       000000000001 (eleven zeroes and a one).


    Each page of the message is delimited by a sequence of six (6)
    EOLs that MUST start on a byte boundary.  The image bit stream is
    padded with zeroes as needed to achieve this alignment.

    Searching for the boundary is a matter of searching for the byte
    sequence (HEX) 00 10 01 00 10 01 00 10 01, which cannot occur
    inside the image.

    See Section 7.5 for the algorithm on conversion between this
    encoding and the X.400 encoding.

    The Base64 content-transfer-encoding is appropriate for carrying
    this content-type.


    3.  g3-facsimile - image/g3fax

    X.400 Body part: g3-facsimile
    MIME Content-Type: image/g3fax
    Conversion Type: nearly Byte copy
    Comments:

    The Parameters of the X.400 G3Fax body part are mapped to the
    corresponding Parameters on the MIME Image/G3Fax body part and
    vice versa.  Note that:





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     (1)   If fineResolution is not specified, pixels will be twice as
           tall as they are wide

     (2)   If any bit not corresponding to a specially named option is
           set in the G3Fax NonBasicParameters, the "DCS" parameter
           must be used.

     (3)   Interworking is not guaranteed if any bit apart from those
           specially named are used in the NonBasicParameters

    From X.400 to G3Fax, the body is created in the following way:

     (1)   Any trailing EOL markers on each bitstring is removed. The
           bit order is changed to conform to the most common Internet
           encoding (highest bit of first byte = first bit of the
           G3Fax). The bitstring is padded to a byte boundary.

     (2)   6 consecutive EOL markers are appended to each bitstring.

     (3)   The padded bitstrings are concatenated together

    An EOL marker is the bit sequence 000000000001 (11 zeroes and a
    one).

    From G3Fax to X.400, the body is created in the following way:

     (1)   The body is split into bitstrings at each occurrence of 6
           consecutive EOL markers. Trailing EOLs must NOT be removed,
           since the X.400 Implementor Guide recommends that each page
           should end with 6 consecutive EOLs.  (This is a change from
           RFC 1494).

     (2)   Each bitstring is made into an ASN.1 BITSTRING, reversing
           the order of bits within each byte to conforom to the X.400
           Implementors Guide recommendation for bit order in the
           G3Fax body part.

     (3)   The bitstrings are made into an ASN.1 SEQUENCE, which forms
           the body of the G3Fax body part.










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    4.  Usability of G3Fax body parts

    This section is not part of the standard (if this becomes a
    standard), but is intended as guidance for people implementing
    G3Fax handling, so that they know a little about what to expect.

    The DCS bitstring is a LONG thing; the T.30 Recommendation (1993)
    gives 67 bits with specific functions, SG8 Report R33 extends this
    to 75 bits, and Report R41 (approved in 1995) extends it to 79
    bits. (For curiosity - bit 68 says that the coding is JPEG; bit 27
    is "error correcting mode). No sane implementor will send such
    things without being able to negotiate them down if the recipient
    doesn't support it, but there is no guarantee that messages with
    such bits set in the DCS won't arrive through X.400.

    The ISO P2 profile from 1995 [PROFILE] says that the profile makes
    support for reception of two-dimensional and fine-resolution
    mandatory if g3-facsimile is supported at all. Research by Andrew
    Gordon of Net-Tel indicates that it is easy for an access unit to
    support fine resolution, unlimited length and B4 length, while
    support for B4 width is nearly impossible, and A3 width is hard.

    Another interesting point is that some fax machines have trouble
    if the scan lines do not contain exactly the declared number of
    pixels on each scan line, so "omitting right-hand white space" is
    likely to give trouble.



    5.  Security considerations

    There are no known security issues specific to the FAX body part.


    6.  REFERENCES


    [MIME]
         RFC 1521: N. Borenstein, N. Freed, "MIME  (Multipurpose
         Internet Mail Extensions) Part One:  Mechanisms for
         Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message
         Bodies", 09/23/1993







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    [GUIDE]
         X.400 Implementor's Guide, version 8


    [PROFILE]
         ISO/IEC ISP 12062-2: 1995:


    [T.30]
         ITU-T Recommendation T.30 (1993): Procedures for document
         facsimile transmission in the general switched telephone
         network





































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