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IETF RFC 1342
Representation of Non-ASCII Text in Internet Message Headers
Last modified on Wednesday, June 10th, 1992
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Network Working Group K. Moore
Request for Comments: 1342 University of Tennessee
June 1992
Representation of Non-ASCII Text in Internet Message Headers
 Status of this Memo
This RFC specifies an IAB standards track protocol for the Internet
community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.
Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB Official Protocol
Standards" for the standardization state and status of this protocol.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This memo describes an extension to the message format defined in [1]
(known to the IETF Mail Extensions Working Group as "RFC 1341"), to
allow the representation of character sets other than ASCII in RFC
822 message headers. The extensions described were designed to be
highly compatible with existing Internet mail handling software, and
to be easily implemented in mail readers that support RFC 1341.
Introduction
RFC 1341 describes a mechanism for denoting textual body parts which
are coded in various character sets, as well as methods for encoding
such body parts as sequences of printable ASCII characters. This
memo describes similar techniques to allow the encoding of non-ASCII
text in various portions of a RFC 822 [2] message header, in a manner
which is unlikely to confuse existing message handling software.
Like the encoding techniques described in RFC 1341, the techniques
outlined here were designed to allow the use of non-ASCII characters
in message headers in a way which is unlikely to be disturbed by the
quirks of existing Internet mail handling programs. In particular,
some mail relaying programs are known to (a) delete some message
header fields while retaining others, (b) rearrange the order of
addresses in To or Cc fields, (c) rearrange the (vertical) order of
header fields, and/or (d) "wrap" message headers at different places
than those in the original message. In addition, some mail reading
programs are known to have difficulty correctly parsing message
headers which, while legal according to RFC 822, make use of
backslash-quoting to "hide" special characters such as "<", ",", or
or which exploit other infrequently-used features of that
specification.
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RFC 1342 Non-ASCII Mail Headers June 1992
While it is unfortunate that these programs do not correctly
interpret RFC 822 headers, to "break" these programs would cause
severe operational problems for the Internet mail system. The
extensions described in this memo therefore do not rely on little-
used features of RFC 822. Instead, certain sequences of "ordinary"
printable ASCII characters (which are assumed to be unlikely to
otherwise appear in message headers) are reserved for use as encoded
data. The characters used in these encodings are restricted to those
which do not have special meanings in the context in which the
encoded text appears.
Encodings
An "encoded-word" is a sequence of printable ASCII characters that
begins with "=?", ends with "?=", and has two "?"s in between. It
specifies a character set and an encoding method, and also includes
the original text encoded as ASCII characters, according to the rules
for that encoding method.
A mail composer that implements this specification will provide a
means of inputing non-ASCII text in header fields, but will translate
these fields (or appropriate portions of these fields) into encoded-
words before inserting them into the message header.
A mail reader that implements this specification will recognize
encoded-words when they appear in certain portions of the message
header. Instead of displaying the encoded-word "as is", it will
reverse the encoding and display the original text in the designated
character set.
An "encoded-word" is more precisely defined by the following EBNF
grammar, using the notation of RFC 822:
encoded-word = "=" "?" charset "?" encoding "?" encoded-text "?" "="
charset = token ; legal charsets defined by RFC 1341
encoding = token ; Either "B" or "Q"
token = 1*<Any CHAR except SPACE, CTLs, and tspecials>
tspecials = "(" / ")" / "<" / ">" / "@" / "," / ";" / ":" / "\" /
<"> / "/" / "[" / "]" / "?" / "." / "="
encoded-text = 1*<Any printable ASCII character other than "?" or
; SPACE> (but see "Use of encoded-words in message
; headers", below)
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RFC 1342 Non-ASCII Mail Headers June 1992
An encoded-word may not be more than 75 characters long, including
charset, encoding, encoded-text, and delimiters. If it is desirable
to encode more text than will fit in an encoded-word of 75
characters, multiple encoded-words (separated by SPACE or newline)
may be used. Message header lines that contain one or more encoded-
words should be no more than 76 characters long. NOTE: These
restrictions are included not only to ease interoperbility through
internetwork mail gateways, but also to impose a limit on the amount
of lookahead a header parser must employ (while looking for a final
?= delimiter) before it can decide whether a token is an encoded-word
or something else.
Initially, the legal values for "encoding" are "Q" and "B". These
encodings are described below. The "Q" encoding is recommended for
use with Latin character sets, and the "B" encoding for all others.
Nevertheless, a mail reader which claims to recognize encoded-words
MUST be able to accept either encoding for any character set which it
supports.
Only a subset of the printable ASCII characters may be used in
encoded-text. The SPACE character is not allowed, so that the
beginning and end of an encoded-word are obvious. The "?" character
is used within an encoded-word to separate the various portions of
the encoded-word from one another, and thus cannot appear in the
encoded-text portion. Other characters are also illegal in certain
contexts. For example, an encoded-word in a "phrase" preceeding an
address in a From header field may not contain any of the "specials"
defined in RFC 822. Finally, certain other characters are disallowed
in some contexts, to ensure reliability for messages that pass
through internetwork mail gateways.
The "B" encoding automatically meets these requirements. The "Q"
encoding allows a wide range of printable characters to be used in
non-critical locations in the message header (e.g., Subject), with
fewer characters available for use in other locations.
The "B" encoding
The "B" encoding is identical to the "BASE64" encoding defined by RFC
1341.
The "Q" encoding
The "Q" encoding is similar to the "Quoted-Printable" content-
transfer-encoding defined in RFC 1341. It is designed to allow text
containing mostly ASCII characters to be decipherable on an ASCII
terminal without decoding.
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RFC 1342 Non-ASCII Mail Headers June 1992
1. Any 8-bit value may be represented by a "=" followed by two
hexadecimal digits. For example, if the character set in use
were ISO-8859-1, the "=" character would thus be encoded as
"=3D", and a SPACE by "=20".
2. The 8-bit hexadecimal value 20 (e.g., IS0-8859-1 SPACE) may be
represented as "_" (underscore, ASCII 95.). (This character may
not pass through some internetwork mail gateways, but its use
will greatly enhance readability of "Q" encoded data with mail
readers that do not support this encoding.) Note that the "_"
always represents hexadecimal 20, even if the SPACE character
occupies a different code position in the character set in use.
3. 8-bit values which correspond to printable ASCII characters other
than "=", "?", "_" (underscore), and SPACE may be represented as
those characters. (But see "Use of encoded-words in message
headers", below).
Character sets
In an encoded-word, the character set associated with the unencoded
text is specified by a charset. A charset can be any of the
character set names allowed in an RFC 1341 "charset" parameter of a
"text/plain" body part. (See section 7.1.1 of RFC 1341 for a list of
valid charset parameters).
When there is a possibility of using more than one character set to
represent the text in an encoded-word, and in the absence of private
agreements between sender and recipients of a message, it is
recommended that members of the ISO-8859-* series be used in
preference to other character sets. Among the various ISO-8859-*
character sets, the lowest-numbered set which contains all of the
required characters should be used.
Use of encoded-words in message headers
A sequence of one or more encoded-words is used to represent non-
ASCII textual data within a header field. An encoded-word must be
separated from an adjacent encoded-word, "word", "text", "ctext", or
"special" by a linear white-space character or a newline. When
displaying a particular header field" (in the RFC 822 sense)
containing one or more encoded-words, an unencoded SPACE character
that immediately follows the encoded-word is not displayed. A
newline that immediately follows an encoded-word is not displayed
unless the encoded-word is the last token in that "field". (This is
to allow the use of multiple encoded-words to represent long strings
of unencoded text, without having to separate encoded-words where
spaces occur in the unencoded text.)
Moore PAGE 4
RFC 1342 Non-ASCII Mail Headers June 1992
An encoded-word may appear in a message header or body part header
according to the following rules:
- An encoded-word may replace a "text" token (as defined by RFC 822) in:
(1) a Subject or Comments header field, (2) any extension message
header field, (3) any user-defined message header field, or (4) any
RFC 1341 body part header field (such as Content-Description) for
which the field body contains only "text"s.
- An encoded-word may appear within a comment delimited by "(" and ")",
i.e., wherever a "ctext" is allowed. More precisely, the RFC 822 EBNF
definition for "comment" is amended as follows:
comment = "(" *(ctext / quoted-pair / comment / encoded-word) ")"
A "Q"-encoded encoded-word which appears in a comment MUST NOT contain
the characters "(", ")" or "\".
- As a replacement for a "word" entity within a "phrase", for example,
one that precedes an address in a From, To, or Cc header. The EBNF
definition for phrase from RFC 822 thus becomes:
phrase = 1*(encoded-word / word)
In this case the set of characters that may be used in a "Q"-encoded
encoded-word is restricted to: <upper and lower case ASCII letters,
decimal digits, "!", "*", "+", "-", "/", "=", and "_" (underscore,
ASCII 95.)>.
These are the ONLY locations where an encoded-word may appear. In
particular, an encoded-word MUST NOT appear in any portion of an
"address". In addition, an encoded-word MUST NOT be used in a
Received header field.
Whenever such words appear in a header being displayed, an enlightened
mail reader will decode the text and render it appropriately.
Only textual data (printable and white space characters) should be
encoded using this scheme. However, since these encoding schemes
allow the encoding of arbitrary 8-bit values, mail readers that
implement this decoding should also ensure that display of the
decoded data on the recipient's terminal will not cause unwanted
side-effects.
Use of these methods to encode non-textual data (e.g., pictures or
sounds) is not defined by this memo. Use of encoded-words to
represent strings of purely ASCII characters is allowed, but
discouraged.
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RFC 1342 Non-ASCII Mail Headers June 1992
Recognition of encoded-words in message headers.
An encoded-word may be distinguished from an ordinary "word", "text",
or "ctext", as follows: An encoded-word begins with "=?", ends with
"?=", contains exactly four "?" characters including the delimiters,
and is followed by a SPACE or newline. If the "word", "text", or
"ctext" does not meet the above tests, it should be displayed as it
appears in the message header.
If the mail reader does not support the character set used, it may
either display the encoded-word as ordinary text (i.e., as it appears
in the header), or it may substitute an appropriate message
indicating that the decoded text could not be displayed.
Conformance
A mail composing program claiming compliance with this specification
MUST ensure that any string of printable ASCII characters in a
message header that begins with "=?" and ends with "?=" be a valid
encoded-word.
A mail reading program claiming compliance with this specification
must be able to distinguish encoded-words from "text", "ctext", or
"word"s anytime they appear in appropriate places in message headers.
The program must be able to display unencoded text if the character
set is "US-ASCII". For the ISO-8859-* character sets, the mail
reading program must at least be able to display the characters which
are also in the ASCII set.
Examples
From: =?US-ASCII?Q?Keith_Moore?= <moore@cs.utk.edu>
To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>
CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_?= Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?B?SWYgeW91IGNhbiByZWFkIHRoaXMgeW8=?=
=?ISO-8859-2?B?dSB1bmRlcnN0YW5kIHRoZSBleGFtcGxlLg==?=
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Olle_J=E4rnefors?= <ojarnef@admin.kth.se>
To: ietf-822@dimacs.rutgers.edu, ojarnef@admin.kth.se
Subject: Time for ISO 10646?
To: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@mordor.stanford.edu>
Cc: ietf-822@dimacs.rutgers.edu, paf@comsol.se
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Patrik_F=E4ltstr=F6m?= <paf@nada.kth.se>
Subject: Re: RFC-HDR care and feeding
Moore PAGE 6
RFC 1342 Non-ASCII Mail Headers June 1992
From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@thumper.bellcore.com>
(=?iso-8859-8?b?7eXs+SDv4SDp7Oj08A==?=)
To: Greg Vaudreuil <gvaudre@NRI.Reston.VA.US>, Ned Freed
<ned@innosoft.com>,
Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
Subject: Test of new header generator
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
References
[1] Borenstein N., and N. Freed, "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions): Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format
of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 1341, Bellcore, Innosoft,
June 1992.
[2] Crocker, D., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
Messages", RFC 822, UDEL, August 1982.
Security Considerations
Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
Author's Address
Keith Moore
University of Tennessee
107 Ayres Hall
Knoxville TN 37996-1301
EMail: moore@cs.utk.edu
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Representation of Non-ASCII Text in Internet Message Headers
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 15845 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Wednesday, June 10th, 1992
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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