| Network Working Group | C. Jennings |
| Request for Comments: 4770 | Cisco Systems |
| Category: Standards Track | J. Reschke, Editor |
| greenbytes | |
| January 2007 |
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the “Internet Official Protocol Standards” (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.¶
Copyright © The IETF Trust (2007). All Rights Reserved.¶
This document describes an extension to vCard to support Instant Messaging (IM) and Presence Protocol (PP) applications. IM and PP are becoming increasingly common ways of communicating, and users want to save this contact information in their address books. It allows a URI that is associated with IM or PP to be specified inside a vCard.¶
As more and more people use various instant messaging (IM) and presence protocol (PP) applications, it becomes important for them to be able to share this contact address information, along with the rest of their contact information. RFC 2425 [1] and RFC 2426 [2] define a standard format for this information, which is referred to as vCard. This document defines a new type in a vCard for representing instant IM and PP URIs. It is very similar to existing types for representing email address and telephone contact information.¶
The type entry to hold this new contact information is an IMPP type. The IMPP entry has a single URI (see RFC 3986 [3]) that indicates the address of a service that provides IM, PP, or both. Also defined are some parameters that give hints as to when certain URIs would be appropriate. A given vCard can have multiple IMPP entries, but each entry can contain only one URI. Each IMPP entry can contain multiple parameters. Any combination of parameters is valid, although a parameter should occur, at most, once in a given IMPP entry.¶
The type of URI indicates what protocols might be usable for accessing it, but this document does not define any of the types. For example, a URI type of¶
The required email to define this extension (as defined in RFC2425 [1]) was sent on October 29, 2004, to the ietf-mime-direct@imc.org mailing list with the subject "Registration of text/directory MIME type IMPP" (see <http://www.imc.org/ietf-mime-direct/mail-archive/msg00068.html>).¶
This specification updates the "text/directory MIME Types" subregistry in the "text/directory MIME Registrations" registry at http://www.iana.org/assignments/text-directory-registrations with the following information:¶
Type name: IMPP¶
Type purpose: To specify the URI for instant messaging and presence protocol communications with the object the vCard represents.¶
Type encoding: 8bit¶
Type value: A single URI. The type of the URI indicates the protocol that can be used for this contact.¶
Type special notes: The type may include the type parameter "TYPE" to specify an intended use for the URI. The TYPE parameter values include one or more of the following:¶
Additional information can be found in RFC 4770.¶
Intended usage: COMMON¶
The following ABNF grammar [4] extends the grammar found in RFC 2425 [1] (Section 5.8.2) and RFC 2426 [2] (Section 4).¶
;For name="IMPP"
param = impp-param ; Only impp parameters are allowed
value = URI
; URI defined in Section 3 of [3]
impp-param = "TYPE" "=" impp-type *("," impp-type)
impp-type = "PERSONAL" / "BUSINESS" / ; purpose of communications
"HOME" / "WORK" / "MOBILE" /
"PREF" /
iana-token / x-name;
; Values are case insensitive
BEGIN:vCard VERSION:3.0 FN:Alice Doe IMPP;TYPE=personal,pref:im:alice@example.com END:vCard
This does not introduce additional security issues beyond the current vCard specification. It is worth noting that many people consider their presence information more sensitive than other address information. Any system that stores or transfers vCards needs to carefully consider the privacy issues around this information.¶
Thanks to Brian Carpenter, Lars Eggert, Ted Hardie, Paul Hoffman, Sam Roberts, and Pekka Pessi for their comments.¶
Copyright © The IETF Trust (2007).¶
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.¶
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an “AS IS” basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY, THE IETF TRUST AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.¶
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr.¶
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org.¶
Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA).¶