From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Mon Apr 21 2003 - 16:25:13 CDT
Dirk Nimmich wrote:
> Bruce Lilly wrote:
>
>>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>>>2.3 The content of the first line of a header MUST NOT consist of WSP only
>>> (though such SHOULD be accepted). Observe that continuation lines
>>> of headers also MUST NOT consist of WSP only, as in RFC 2822.
>>
>>The first part of that may be a problem (see above and below re.
>>encoded-words -- it may be necessary to fold).
>
>
> No problem here except when the charset*language part of an
> encoded-wort exceeds 76 - header-name length - 10 characters (for
> colon, SP, =?, ?Q? or ?B?, ?=, and at least one charater as
> encoded-text). White space between two encoded-words is to be
> ignored, so you can fold in between without any effect for the
> decoded text. "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?F=AE?= =?US-ASCII?Q?rber?=" decoded is
> "Färber", for example (whereas "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?F=AE?= rber" would be
> "Fä rber").
This is one of those cases where it is necessary to consider where the rule
(if it is retained) is enforced. Suppose a UA generates:
Organization:
=?ISO-8859-1*de?q?Citykom_M=FCnster_Gesellschaft_mit_beschr=AEnkter_?=
=?ISO-8859-1*de?q?Haftung?=
That's a perfectly valid RFC 2822 / MIME field. Which software is supposed
to enforce the no-WSP-only-on-first-line rule? What should it do -- rejecting
a perfectly valid 2822 / MIME message seems a bit harsh; rewriting the field
is generally a bad idea and is unlikely to be implemented well, and combining
the first and second lines will cause the valid message to become invalid
(violating MIME)? In this particular instance, some software could mangle it
as:
Organization: (=?us-ascii*en?q?comment_inserted_to_make_Charles_happy?=)
=?ISO-8859-1*de?q?Citykom_M=FCnster_Gesellschaft_mit_beschr=AEnkter_?=
=?ISO-8859-1*de?q?Haftung?=
but that might not work in general (not all fields permit comments).