RFC 2161

A MIME Body Part for ODA

📅 published January 1998, from ietf

Hiii bestie 🎀 okay so, RFC 2161 is called A MIME Body Part for ODA 🦋. It was written by Harald Tveit Alvestrand of UNINETT, it's labeled Experimental, and it's dated January 1998. This copy doesn't list any Obsoletes or Updates info, so it isn't replacing or changing any other RFC in a formal way. 💅

Table of Contents 📚

    Status of this Memo ........................................    1
   1 Introduction ..............................................    1
   1.1 The Application/ODA MIME content-type ...................    1
   1.2 ODA - application/oda ...................................    2
   2 Security Considerations ...................................    3
   3 References ................................................    4
   4 Author's Address ..........................................    4
   5 Full Copyright Statement ..................................    5

Status of this Memo 🫶

Okay so this memo is an Experimental Protocol 🧪. It is not an Internet standard, no cap. The Internet community is literally being asked for discussion and suggestions for improvement, so if you have ideas, slide into those threads 💖. Distribution of this memo is unlimited ✨.

Copyright Notice ©️

1. Introduction ✨

Bestie, this doc is where the definitions live for how to carry ODA inside MIME 📦. These definitions were originally in RFC 1495 and RFC 1341, and it also explains how to translate ODA into its X.400 representation 🔁.

1.1. The Application/ODA MIME content-type 🎀

So the "ODA" subtype of application is used when a body contains information encoded according to the Office Document Architecture [ODA] standards, using the ODIF representation format 📄. For application/oda, the Content-Type line should also specify an attribute/value pair that indicates the document application profile (DAP), using the key word "profile", and the document class, using the keyword "class" 🧩.

For the keyword "class", the values "formatted", "processable" and "formatted-processable" are legal values 💅.

So an appropriate header field might look like this 👀:

Content-Type:  application/oda; profile=Q112; class=formatted

For further information, consult the ODA standard [T.411] 📖. The Base64 content-transfer-encoding is appropriate for carrying ODA 🍓.

1.2. ODA - application/oda 🌸

Here's the body part info 💜:

X.400 Body Part: ODA
MIME Content-Type: application/oda
Conversion: None
Comments:

The ODA body part is defined in the CCITT document T.411 [T.411], appendix E, section E.2, "ODA identification in the P2 protocol of MHS" 📚.

Here's an abbreviated version of its ASN.1 definition, and it is giving very structured energy 🧠:

 oda-body-part EXTENDED-BODY-PART-TYPE
         PARAMETERS      OdaBodyPartParameters
         DATA            OdaData
         ::= id-et-oda

 OdaBodyPartParameters ::= SET {
         document-application-profile    [0] OBJECT IDENTIFIER
         document-architecture-class     [1] INTEGER {
                                         formatted (0)
                                         processable (1)
                                         formatted-processable(2)}}

 id-et-oda OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { 2 8 1 0 1 }

Mapping from X.400 to MIME goes like this 🔁✨:

The Parameters.document-application-profile is mapped onto the MIME parameter "profile" according to the table below 🗂️.

Profile         OBJECT IDENTIFIER

Q112            { iso (1) identified-organization (3) ewos (16)
                  eg (2) oda (6) profile (0)  q112 (1) }

The Parameters.document-architecture-class is mapped onto the MIME parameter "class" according to the table below 🧁.

String                  Integer

formatted               formatted(0)
processable             processable(1)
formatted-processable   formatted-processable(2)

NOTE: This parameter is not defined in RFC 1341. 🙈

The body of the MIME content-type is the Data part of the ODA body part 🫧.

Now the other direction, mapping from MIME to X.400 💫. The Parameters.document-application-profile and Parameters.document-architecture-class are set from the tables above. If any of the parameters are missing, the values for Q112 and formatted-processable are used 🛟.

It is an option for the gateway implementor to try to access them from inside the document, where they are defined as 🔍:

document-profile.document-characteristics.document-architecture-class
document-profile.document-characteristics.document-application-profile

Gateways are NOT required to do this, since the document-characteristics are optional parameters 🙃. If a gateway does not, it simply uses the defaulting rules defined above 🧚.

The OBJECT IDENTIFIERs for the document application profile and for ODA {2 8 0 0} must be added to the Encoded Information Types parameter of the message envelope 📨.

2. Security Considerations 🔐

Okay, this section is important, so pay attention 👀. ODA body parts have the natural propensity of complex structures, which makes it hard to find out what the parts are capable of 🌀.

Moreover, ODA is an extensible architecture where new content portions may be added at any time, so the threats posed by this body part may change over time 😭.

However, no security risks related to ODA are known at this time 🫶.

3. References 📚

[MIME] Freed, N., and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.

[T.411] CCITT Recommendation T.411 (1988), Open Document Architecture (ODA) and Interchange Format, Introduction and General Principles.

4. Author's Address 💌

Harald Tveit Alvestrand UNINETT Postboks 6883 Elgeseter N-7002 TRONDHEIM

Phone: +47 73 59 70 94 EMail: Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no

5. Full Copyright Statement ⭐

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS 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. 🦋

📦 where this page comes from

ietf: rfc2161 1998-01
💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on 2026-10-15: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms