From: Ian Bell (ianbell@turnpike.com)
Date: Wed Mar 20 2002 - 04:53:20 CST
On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
>In <2KTs0RFJ+gk8IAGX@pillar.turnpike.com> Ian Bell
><ianbell@turnpike.com> writes:
>>On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
>What I cannot understand is why they did not update RFC 2047 so as to
>allow it is be used in parameters. There must be lots of software out
>there that understands RFC 2047, but does not understand RFC 2231.
And as you found out, some clients parse parameters 'correctly' that
have been sent encoded using RFC2047 rules. (including Turnpike!)
>But that is all water under the bridge, I suppose.
Unfortunately, yes.
>>> Similar considerations apply to non-ASCII characters within the
>>> values of parameters (which, according to the syntax, MUST be in the
>>> form of quoted-strings in order for UTF8-xtra-chars to be
>>> accomodated). There is NO requirement to support the extensions set
>>> out in [RFC 2231] for specifying continuations, character sets or
>>> languages in such values, though reading agents MAY support them.
>>>
>>>Is that OK?
>
>>No, MIME is not USEFOR's to change. 8bit characters in MIME headers
>>should not be allowed until MIME is extended to allow it.
>
>>So clients MAY implement RFC2231, but if they want to send 8bit
>>characters in MIME parameters with the Content-Type or
>>Content-Disposition headers, they MUST use it.
>
>But I see no reason for a MUST.
I do...
>Currently, all our headers are 8-bit clean, using UTF-8. So we allow
>
>Newsgroups: dk.test.utf8-זרו
The newsgroups header is USEFORs to define, so that's OK
>Subject: test message to dk.test.utf8-זרו
Subject is not exactly USEFORs to define, but as it is unstructured,
nothing bad should come of that.
>Archive: yes; filename = "dk/test/utf8-זרו"
Archive is USEFORs to define, so no problem here
>(or similar stuff in a Content-Disposition header)?
But MIME is _not_ for USEFOR to define. RFC2231 also transmits language
information and allows for long parameters, so when (!) MIME is extended
to allow 8bit headers, it may (will) not be done in the way you are
proposing.
USEFOR going its own way redefining MIME in this way is wrong.
-- Ian Bell T U R N P I K E