RFC 3462 (rfc3462) - Page 2 of 7


The Multipart/Report Content Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages



Alternative Format: Original Text Document



RFC 3462                    Multipart/Report                January 2003


Table of Contents

   Document Conventions................................................2
   1. The Multipart/Report Content Type................................2
   2. The Text/RFC 822-Headers..........................................4
   3. Security Considerations..........................................4
   4. Normative References.............................................5
   Appendix A - Changes from RFC 1893..................................6
   Author's Address....................................................6
   Full Copyright Statement............................................7

Document Conventions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119
   [RFC 2119].

1. The Multipart/Report Content Type

   The Multipart/Report MIME content-type is a general "family" or
   "container" type for electronic mail reports of any kind. Although
   this memo defines only the use of the Multipart/Report content-type
   with respect to delivery status reports, mail processing programs
   will benefit if a single content-type is used to for all kinds of
   reports.

   The Multipart/Report content-type is defined as follows:

      MIME type name: multipart
      MIME subtype name: report
      Required parameters: boundary, report-type
      Optional parameters: none
      Encoding considerations: 7bit should always be adequate
      Security considerations: see section 3 of this memo

   The syntax of Multipart/Report is identical to the Multipart/Mixed
   content type defined in [MIME].  When used to send a report, the
   Multipart/Report content-type must be the top-level MIME content type
   for any report message.  The report-type parameter identifies the
   type of report.  The parameter is the MIME content sub-type of the
   second body part of the Multipart/Report.

   User agents and gateways must be able to automatically determine that
   a message is a mail system report and should be processed as such.
   Placing the Multipart/Report as the outermost content provides a
   mechanism whereby an auto-processor may detect through parsing the
   RFC 822 headers that the message is a report.



Vaudreuil                   Standards Track