RFC 2047 (rfc2047) - Page 1 of 15

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text

Network Working Group                                           K. Moore
Request for Comments: 2047                       University of Tennessee
Obsoletes: 1521, 1522, 1590                                November 1996
Category: Standards Track


        MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part Three:
              Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text

Status of this Memo

   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.

Abstract

   STD 11, RFC 822, defines a message representation protocol specifying
   considerable detail about US-ASCII message headers, and leaves the
   message content, or message body, as flat US-ASCII text.  This set of
   documents, collectively called the Multipurpose Internet Mail
   Extensions, or MIME, redefines the format of messages to allow for

   (1) textual message bodies in character sets other than US-ASCII,

   (2) an extensible set of different formats for non-textual message
       bodies,

   (3) multi-part message bodies, and

   (4) textual header information in character sets other than US-ASCII.

   These documents are based on earlier work documented in RFC 934, STD
   11, and RFC 1049, but extends and revises them.  Because RFC 822 said
   so little about message bodies, these documents are largely
   orthogonal to (rather than a revision of) RFC 822.

   This particular document is the third document in the series.  It
   describes extensions to RFC 822 to allow non-US-ASCII text data in
   Internet mail header fields.









Moore                       Standards Track