Last, last, last visit to Critical-Content / Content-Disposition


Eric Burger (eburger@snowshore.com)
Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:45:34 -0500


At the VPIM lunch BOF, I reviewed why we said "no" to putting
Critical-Content as a parameter to Content-Disposition.

Going back to the deep, dark past, the original proposal was to do the
following:

     Content-Disposition: attachment; content-notification=true

This was shot down because per-part notification control and part type
labeling did not belong as a "disposition". This scenario came about in the
evolution of partial-non-delivery notification (PNDN) to the critical
content concept.

Looking over the archives and some private correspondence, it is clear that
content-notification, as a part of PNDN, is an inappropriate use of
Content-Disposition. However, it is also clear that criticality IS an
appropriate use of Content-Disposition.

Given the realities of BODYSTRUCTURE, and the fact that we are NOT bending
Content-Disposition too far, the consensus is to use a CRITICALITY parameter
to Content-Disposition, rather than a new MIME entity, for criticality
marking.

The -03 way of marking:

   Critical part:
       --Next part
       Content-Type: ...
       Content-Disposition: attachment; file=foo.bar
       Content-Criticality: CRITICAL
       ...

   Not important part:
       --Next part
       Content-Type: ...
       Content-Disposition: attachment; file=foo.bar
       Content-Criticality: IGNORE
       ...

The -04 (future) way of marking:
   Critical part:
       --Next part
       Content-Type: ...
       Content-Disposition: attachment; file=foo.bar; criticality=CRITICAL
       ...

   Not important part:
       --Next part
       Content-Type: ...
       Content-Disposition: attachment; file=foo.bar; criticality=IGNORE
       ...

Speak now...



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