RFC 1312 (rfc1312) - Page 2 of 8
Message Send Protocol 2
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1312 Message Send Protocol 2 April 1992
cookie, etc.) are case-insensitive. The parts are as follows:
RECIPIENT The name of the user that the message is directed to.
If this part is empty, the message may be delivered to
any user of the destination system.
RECIP-TERM The name of the terminal to which the message is to be
delivered. The syntax and semantics of terminal names
are outside the scope of this specification. If this
part is empty, the "right" terminal is chosen. This is
a system-dependent function. If this part consists of
the string "*", all terminals on the destination
system are implied. If the RECIPIENT part is empty
but the RECIP-TERM is not, the message is written on
the specified terminal. If both the RECIPIENT and
RECIP-TERM parts are empty, the message should be
written on the "console", which is defined as some
place where the message is most likely to be seen by a
human operator or administrator.
MESSAGE The actual message. The server need not preserve the
formatting and white-space content of the message if
this is necessary to display it. New lines should be
represented using the usual Netascii CR + LF.
(Following the Internet tradition, a server should
probably be prepared to accept a message in which some
other end-of-line convention is followed, but a
conforming client must use CR + LF.)
The message text may only contain printable characters
from the ISO 8859/1 set, which is upward compatible
from USASCII, plus CR, LF and TAB. No other control
codes or escape sequences may be included: the client
should strip them from the message before it is
transmitted, and the server must check each incoming
message for illegal codes. (A server may choose to
display the message after stripping out such codes, or
may reject the entire message.) If the MESSAGE part is
empty, the message may be discarded by the server.
SENDER The username of the sender. (This and subsequent parts
were not present in version 1 of the Message Send
Protocol.) This part should not be empty. A server may
choose to accept, reject or ignore messages in which
the SENDER part is empty.
SENDER-TERM The name of the sending user's terminal. This part may
be empty. The intention is that a recipient may reply
Nelson & Arnold