Internet Draft: The Text/Plain Format Parameter R. Gellens Document: draft-gellens-format-bis-00.txt Qualcomm Expires: August 2003 22 February 2003 Updates: RFC 2046 Obsoletes: RFC 2646 The Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at <http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt> The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at <http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html>. A version of this draft document is intended for submission to the RFC editor as a Proposed Standard for the Internet Community. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This specification establishes two parameters to be used with the Text/Plain media type, and, in the presence of these parameters, the use of trailing whitespace to indicate flowed lines. This results in an encoding which appears as normal Text/Plain in older implementations, since it is in fact normal Text/Plain, yet provides for superior wrapping, flowing, and quoting. Gellens [Page 1] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 This standard supersedes the one specified in RFC 2646, "The Text/Plain Format Parameter", and adds the DelSp parameter to accommodate languages/coded character sets in which ASCII spaces are not used or appear rarely. Gellens [Page 2] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 Table of Contents 1. Comments on this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Conventions Used in this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4.1. Paragraph Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4.2. Embarrassing Line Wrap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4.3. New Media Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. The Format and DelSp Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5.1. Generating Format=Flowed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5.2. Interpreting Format=Flowed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5.3. Usenet Signature Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 5.4. Space-Stuffing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 5.5. Quoting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 5.6. Digital Signatures and Encryption . . . . . . . . . . . 11 5.7. Line Analysis Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 5.8. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 6. Interoperability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 7. ABNF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 8. Failure Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 8.1. Trailing White Space Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 11. Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 12. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 13. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 14. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 15. Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Appendix A: Changes from RFC 2646 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Intellectual Property Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1. Comments on this Document Private comments should be sent to the author. Public comments may be sent to the IETF 822 mailing list, <ietf-822@imc.org>. To subscribe, send a message to <ietf-822-request@imc.org> with the word SUBSCRIBE as the body of the message. Archives for the list are at <http://www.imc.org/ietf-822/>. 2. Conventions Used in this Document The key words "REQUIRED", "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" in this document are to be interpreted as described in "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" [KEYWORDS]. Gellens [Page 3] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 3. Introduction Interoperability problems have been observed with erroneous labelling of paragraph text as Text/Plain, and with various forms of "embarrassing line wrap." (See section 4.) Attempts to deploy new media types, such as Text/Enriched [RICH] and Text/HTML [HTML] have suffered from a lack of backwards compatibility and an often hostile user reaction at the receiving end. What is required is a format which is in all significant ways Text/Plain, and therefore is quite suitable for display as Text/Plain, and yet allows the sender to express to the receiver which lines can be considered a logical paragraph, and thus flowed (wrapped and joined) as appropriate. 4. The Problem The Text/Plain media type is the lowest common denominator of Internet email, with lines of no more than 997 characters (by convention usually no more than 80), and where the carriage-return and line-feed (CRLF) sequence represents a line break [MIME-IMT]. Text/Plain is usually displayed as preformatted text, often in a fixed font. That is, the characters start at the left margin of the display window, and advance to the right until a CRLF sequence is seen, at which point a new line is started, again at the left margin. When a line length exceeds the display window, some clients will wrap the line, while others invoke a horizontal scroll bar. Text which meets this description is defined by this memo as "fixed". Some interoperability problems have been observed with this media type: 4.1. Paragraph Text Many modern programs use a proportional-spaced font, and use CRLF to represent paragraph breaks. Line breaks are "soft", occurring as needed on display. That is, characters are grouped into a paragraph until a CRLF sequence is seen, at which point a new paragraph is started. Each paragraph is displayed, starting at the left margin (or paragraph indent), and continuing to the right until a word is encountered which does not fit in the remaining display width. This word is displayed at the left margin of the next line. This continues until the paragraph ends (a CRLF is seen). Extra vertical Gellens [Page 4] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 space is left between paragraphs. Text which meets this description is defined by this memo as "flowed". Numerous software products erroneously label this media type as Text/Plain, resulting in much user discomfort. 4.2. Embarrassing Line Wrap As Text/Plain messages are quoted in replies or forwarded messages, each line gradually increases in length, eventually being arbitrarily hard wrapped, resulting in "embarrassing line wrap". This produces text which is at best hard to read, and often confuses attributions. Example: >>>>>>This is a comment from the first message to show a >quoting example. >>>>>This is a comment from the second message to show a >quoting example. >>>>This is a comment from the third message. >>>This is a comment from the fourth message. It can be confusing to assign attribution to lines 2 and 4 above. In addition, as devices with display widths smaller than 80 characters become more popular, embarrassing line wrap has become even more prevalent, even with unquoted text. Example: This is paragraph text that is meant to be flowed across several lines. However, the sending mailer is converting it to fixed text at a width of 72 characters, which causes it to look like this when shown on a PDA with only 30 character lines. 4.3. New Media Types Gellens [Page 5] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 Attempts to deploy new media types, such as Text/Enriched [RICH] and Text/HTML [HTML] have suffered from a lack of backwards compatibility and an often hostile user reaction at the receiving end. In particular, Text/Enriched requires that open angle brackets ("<") and hard line breaks be doubled, with resulting user unhappiness when viewed as Text/Plain. Text/HTML requires even more alteration of text, with a corresponding increase in user complaints. A proposal to define a new media type to explicitly represent the paragraph form suffered from a lack of interoperability with currently deployed software. Some programs treat unknown subtypes of TEXT as an attachment. What is desired is a format which is in all significant ways Text/Plain, and therefore is quite suitable for display as Text/Plain, and yet allows the sender to express to the receiver which lines can be considered a logical paragraph, and thus flowed (wrapped and joined) as appropriate. 5. The Format and DelSp Parameters This specification defines two MIME parameters for use with Text/Plain: Name: Format Value: Fixed, Flowed Name: DelSp Value: Yes, No (Neither the parameter names nor values are case sensitive.) If Format is not specified, or if the value is not recognized, a value of Fixed is assumed. The semantics of the Fixed value are the usual associated with Text/Plain [MIME-IMT]. A Format value of Flowed indicates that the definition of flowed text (as specified in this memo) was used on generation, and MAY be used on reception. If DelSp is not specified, or if its value is not recognized, a value of No is assumed. The use of DelSp without a Format value of Flowed is undefined. When creating messages, DelSp SHOULD NOT be specified in Text content types other than Text/Plain with Format = Flowed. When receiving messages, DelSp SHOULD be ignored if used in a Text content type other than Text/Plain with Format = Flowed. Gellens [Page 6] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 This section discusses flowed text; section 7 provides a formal definition. Section 6 discusses interoperability. Note that this memo describes an on-the-wire format. It does not address formats for local file storage. 5.1. Generating Format=Flowed When generating Format=Flowed text, lines SHOULD be shorter than 80 characters, including any trailing white space and also including any space added as part of stuffing (see section 5.4). As suggested values, any paragraph longer than 79 characters in total length could be wrapped using lines of 72 or fewer characters. While the specific line length used is a matter of aesthetics and preference, longer lines are more likely to require rewrapping and to encounter difficulties with older mailers. It has been suggested that 66 character lines are the most readable. (The reason for the restriction to 79 or fewer characters between CRLFs on the wire is to ensure that all lines, even when displayed by a non-flowed-aware program, will fit in a standard 80-column screen without having to be wrapped. The limit is 79, not 80, because while 80 fit on a line, the last column is often reserved for a line-wrap indicator.) When creating flowed text, the generating agent wraps, that is, inserts 'soft' line breaks as needed. Soft line breaks are added at natural wrapping points, such as between words. A soft line break is a SP CRLF sequence. There are two techniques for inserting soft line breaks. The older technique, established by RFC 2646, created a soft line break by inserting a CRLF after the occurrence of a space. With this technique, soft line breaks are only possible where white space already occurs. When this technique is used, the DelSp parameter SHOULD be used; if used it MUST be set to "no". The newer technique, suitable for use even with languages/coded character sets in which the ASCII space character is rare or not used, creates a soft line break by inserting a SP CRLF sequence. When this technique is used, the DelSp parameter MUST be used and MUST be set to "yes". Note that because of space-stuffing (see section 5.4), when this technique is used and a soft line break is inserted at a point where a SP already exists (such as between words), if the SP CRLF sequence is added immediately before the SP, the pre-existing SP becomes leading and thus requires stuffing. It is RECOMMENDED that agents avoid this by inserting the SP CRLF Gellens [Page 7] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 sequence following the existing SP. Generating agents MAY use either method within each Text/Plain body part. Regardless of which technique is used, a generating agent SHOULD NOT insert white space in an unnatural location, such as into a word (a sequence of printable characters, not containing spaces, in a language/coded character set in which spaces are common). If faced with such a word which exceeds 79 characters (but less than 998 characters, the [SMTP] limit on line length), the agent SHOULD send the word as is and exceed the 79-character limit on line length. A generating agent SHOULD: o Ensure all lines (fixed and flowed) are 79 characters or fewer in length, counting any trailing space as well as a space added as stuffing, but not counting the CRLF, unless a word by itself exceeds 79 characters. o Trim spaces before user-inserted hard line breaks. o Space-stuff lines which start with a space, "From ", or ">". In order to create messages which do not require space-stuffing, and are thus more aesthetically pleasing when viewed as Format=Fixed, a generating agent MAY avoid wrapping immediately before ">", "From ", or space. (See sections 5.4 and 5.5 for more information on space-stuffing and quoting, respectively.) A Format=Flowed message consists of zero or more paragraphs, each containing one or more flowed lines followed by one fixed line. The usual case is a series of flowed text lines with blank (empty) fixed lines between them. Any number of fixed lines can appear between paragraphs. [Quoted-Printable] encoding SHOULD NOT be used with Format=Flowed unless absolutely necessary (for example, non-US-ASCII (8-bit) characters over a strictly 7-bit transport such as unextended [SMTP]). In particular, a message SHOULD NOT be encoded in Quoted-Printable for the sole purpose of protecting the trailing space on flowed lines unless the body part is cryptographically signed or encrypted (see Section 5.6). The intent of Format=Flowed is to allow user agents to generate flowed text which is non-obnoxious when viewed as pure, raw Text/Plain (without any decoding); use of Quoted-Printable hinders this and may cause Format=Flowed to be rejected by end users. Gellens [Page 8] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 5.2. Interpreting Format=Flowed If the first character of a line is a quote mark (">"), the line is considered to be quoted (see section 5.5). Logically, all quote marks are counted and deleted, resulting in a line with a non-zero quote depth, and content. (The agent is of course free to display the content with quote marks or excerpt bars or anything else.) Logically, this test for quoted lines is done before any other tests (that is, before checking for space-stuffed and flowed). If the first character of a line is a space, the line has been space-stuffed (see section 5.4). Logically, this leading space is deleted before examining the line further (that is, before checking for flowed). If the line ends in one or more spaces, the line is flowed. Otherwise it is fixed. If the line is flowed and DelSp is "yes", the trailing space immediately prior to the line's CRLF is logically deleted. If the DelSp parameter is "no" (or not specified, or set to an unrecognized value), the trailing space is not deleted. Any remaining trailing spaces are part of the line's content, but the CRLF of a soft line break is not. A series of one or more flowed lines followed by one fixed line is considered a paragraph, and MAY be flowed (wrapped and unwrapped) as appropriate on display and in the construction of new messages (see section 5.5). A line consisting of one or more spaces (after deleting a stuffed space) is considered a flowed line. An empty line (just a CRLF) is a fixed line. 5.3. Usenet Signature Convention There is a convention in Usenet news of using "-- " as the separator line between the body and the signature of a message. When generating a Format=Flowed message containing a Usenet-style separator before the signature, the separator line is sent as-is. This is a special case; an (optionally quoted) line consisting of DASH DASH SP is not considered flowed. 5.4. Space-Stuffing Gellens [Page 9] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 In order to allow for unquoted lines which start with ">", and to protect against systems which "From-munge" in-transit messages (modifying any line which starts with "From " to ">From "), Format=Flowed provides for space-stuffing. Space-stuffing adds a single space to the start of any line which needs protection when the message is generated. On reception, if the first character of a line is a space, it is logically deleted. This occurs after the test for a quoted line, and before the test for a flowed line. On generation, any unquoted lines which start with ">", and any lines which start with a space or "From " SHOULD be space-stuffed. Other lines MAY be space-stuffed as desired. (Note that space-stuffing is similar to dot-stuffing as specified in [SMTP].) 5.5. Quoting In Format=Flowed, the canonical quote indicator (or quote mark) is one or more close angle bracket (">") characters. Lines which start with the quote indicator are considered quoted. The number of ">" characters at the start of the line specifies the quote depth. Flowed lines which are also quoted may require special handling on display and when copied to new messages. When creating quoted flowed lines, each such line starts with the quote indicator. Note that because of space-stuffing, the lines >> Exit, Stage Left and >>Exit, Stage Left are semantically identical; both have a quote-depth of two, and a content of "Exit, Stage Left". However, the line > > Exit, Stage Left is different. It has a quote-depth of one, and a content of "> Exit, Stage Left". When generating quoted flowed lines, an agent needs to pay attention to changes in quote depth. A sequence of quoted lines of the same quote depth SHOULD be encoded as a paragraph, with the last line generated as fixed and prior lines generated as flowed. Gellens [Page 10] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 If a receiving agent wishes to reformat flowed quoted lines (joining and/or wrapping them) on display or when generating new messages, the lines SHOULD be de-quoted, reformatted, and then re-quoted. To de-quote, the number of close angle brackets in the quote indicator at the start of each line is counted. Consecutive lines with the same quoting depth are considered one paragraph and are reformatted together. To re-quote after reformatting, a quote indicator containing the same number of close angle brackets originally present are prefixed to each line. On reception, if a change in quoting depth occurs on a flowed line, this is an improperly formatted message. The receiver SHOULD handle this error by using the 'quote-depth-wins' rule, which is to ignore the flowed indicator and treat the line as fixed. That is, the change in quote depth ends the paragraph. For example, consider the following sequence of lines (using '*' to indicate a soft line break, i.e., SP CRLF, and '#' to indicate a hard line break, i.e., CRLF): > Thou villainous ill-breeding spongy dizzy-eyed* > reeky elf-skinned pigeon-egg!* <--- problem ---< >> Thou artless swag-bellied milk-livered* >> dismal-dreaming idle-headed scut!# >>> Thou errant folly-fallen spleeny reeling-ripe* >>> unmuzzled ratsbane!# >>>> Henceforth, the coding style is to be strictly* >>>> enforced, including the use of only upper case.# >>>>> I've noticed a lack of adherence to the coding* >>>>> styles, of late.# >>>>>> Any complaints?# The second line ends in a soft line break, even though it is the last line of the one-deep quote block. The question then arises as to how this line should be interpreted, considering that the next line is the first line of the two-deep quote block. The example text above, when processed according to quote-depth wins, results in the first two lines being considered as one quoted, flowed section, with a quote depth of 1; the third and fourth lines become a quoted, flowed section, with a quote depth of 2. A generating agent SHOULD NOT create this situation; a receiving agent SHOULD handle it using quote-depth wins. 5.6. Digital Signatures and Encryption Gellens [Page 11] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 If a message is digitally signed or encrypted it is important that cryptographic processing use the on-the-wire Format=Flowed format. That is, during generation the message SHOULD be prepared for transmission, including addition of soft line breaks, space-stuffing, and [Quoted-Printable] encoding (to protect soft line breaks) before being digitally signed or encrypted; similarly, on receipt the message SHOULD have the signature verified or be decrypted before [Quoted-Printable] decoding and removal of stuffed spaces, soft line breaks and quote marks, and reflowing. 5.7. Line Analysis Table Lines contained in a Text/Plain body part with Format=Flowed can be analyzed by examining the start and end of the line. If the line starts with the quote indicator, it is quoted. If the line ends with one or more space characters, it is flowed. This is summarized by the following table: Starts Ends in with One or Line Quote More Spaces Type ------ ----------- --------------- no no unquoted, fixed yes no quoted, fixed no yes unquoted, flowed yes yes quoted, flowed 5.8. Examples The following example contains three paragraphs: `Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. `I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.' `You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.' This could be encoded as follows (using '*' to indicate a soft line break, that is, SP CRLF sequence, and '#' to indicate a hard line break, that is, CRLF): `Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very* earnestly.# # `I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so* I can't take more.'# Gellens [Page 12] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 # `You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very* easy to take MORE than nothing.'# To show an example of quoting, here we have the same exchange, presented as a series of direct quotes: >>>Take some more tea.# >>I've had nothing yet, so I can't take more.# >You mean you can't take LESS, it's very easy to take* >MORE than nothing.# 6. Interoperability Because flowed lines are all-but-indistinguishable from fixed lines, software which does not recognize Format=Flowed treats flowed lines as normal Text/Plain (which is what they are). Thus, Format=Flowed interoperates with older clients, although flowed lines will have trailing white space inserted. If a space-stuffed message is received by an agent which handles Format=Flowed, the space-stuffing is reversed and thus the message appears unchanged. An agent which is not aware of Format=Flowed will of course not undo any space-stuffing; thus Format=Flowed messages may appear with a leading space on some lines (those which start with a space, ">" which is not a quote indicator, or "From "). Since lines which require space-stuffing rarely occur, and the aesthetic consequences of unreversed space-stuffing are minimal, this is not expected to be a significant problem. If some lines begin with one or more spaces, the generating agent MAY space-stuff all lines, to maintain the relative indentation of the lines when viewed by clients which are not aware of Format=Flowed. Messages generated with DelSp=yes and received by clients which are aware of Format=Flowed but are not aware of the DelSp parameter will have an extra space remaining after removal of soft line breaks. Thus, when generating text in languages/coded character sets in which spaces are common, the generating agent MAY always use the DelSp=no method. Hand-aligned text, such as ASCII tables or art, source code, etc., SHOULD be sent as fixed, not flowed lines. Gellens [Page 13] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 7. ABNF The constructs used in Text/Plain; Format=Flowed body parts are described using Augmented Backus-Naur Form [ABNF], including the core rules defined in Appendix A. fmessage = * ( paragraph / fixed-line ) paragraph = 1*flowed-line fixed-line fixed-line = fixed / sig-sep fixed = [non-empty] CRLF flowed-line = flow-qt / flow-unqt flow-qt = quote [stuffing] *text-char 1*SP CRLF flow-unqt = [stuffing] *text-char 1*SP CRLF non-empty = [quote] [stuffing] *text-char non-sp non-sp = %x01-09 / %x0B / %x0C / %x0E-1F / %x21-7F ; any 7-bit US-ASCII character, excluding ; NUL, CR, LF, and SP quote = 1*">" sig-sep = [ quote [stuffing] ] "--" SP CRLF stuffing = [SP] ; space-stuffed, added on generation if ; needed, deleted on reception text-char = non-sp / SP That is, a Format=Flowed message consists of any number of paragraphs and/or fixed lines; paragraphs need at least one flowed line. Without at least one flowed line, there is a series of fixed lines, each independent. There is no paragraph. With at least one flowed line, there is a paragraph, and the received lines can be reformed and flowed to fit the display window size. This can only be done if the lines are part of a logical grouping, the paragraph. 8. Failure Modes 8.1. Trailing White Space Corruption There are systems in existence which alter trailing whitespace on messages which pass through them. Such systems may strip, or in rarer cases, add trailing whitespace, in violation of RFC 2821 [SMTP] section 4.5.2. Gellens [Page 14] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 Stripping trailing whitespace has the effect of converting flowed lines to fixed lines, which results in a message no worse than if Format=Flowed had not been used. Adding trailing whitespace to a Format=Flowed message may result in a malformed display or reply. Since most systems which add trailing white space do so to create a line which fills an internal record format, the result is almost always a line which contains an even number of characters (counting the added trailing white space). One possible avoidance, therefore, would be to define Format=Flowed lines to use either one or two trailing space characters to indicate a flowed line, such that the total line length is odd. However, considering the scarcity of such systems today, it is not worth the added complexity. 9. Security Considerations Any security considerations which apply to Text/Plain also apply to Text/Plain with Format=Flowed. Section 5.6 discusses the interaction between Format=Flowed and digital signatures or encryption. 10. IANA Considerations IANA is requested to add a reference to this specification in the Text/Plain Media Type registration. 11. Internationalization Considerations The line wrap and quoting specifications of Format=Flowed may not be suitable for certain charsets, such as for Arabic and Hebrew characters that read from right to left. Care should be taken in applying format=flowed in these cases, as format=fixed combined with [quoted-printable] encoding may be more suitable. The DelSp parameter was added specifically to permit Format=Flowed to be used with languages/coded character sets in which the ASCII space character is rarely used, or not used at all. Gellens [Page 15] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 12. Acknowledgments The DelSp parameter was developed during a series of discussions among a number of people, including Harald Alvestrand, Grant Baillie, Ian Bell, Steve Dorner, Patrik Faltstrom, Eric Fischer, Ned Freed, Alexey Melnikov, John Myers, and Pete Resnick. Corrections and clarifications to RFC 2646 and early versions of this draft were pointed out by several people, including Jutta Degener, Simon Josefsson, Dan Kohn, Ragho Mahalingam, Greg Troxel, and Dan Wing. I'm told that NeXT's mail application used a very similar mechanism (without support for non-Western languages) in 1992. 13. Normative References [ABNF] Crocker, Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, Internet Mail Consortium, Demon Internet Ltd., November 1997. [KEYWORDS] Bradner, "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997. [MIME-IMT] Freed, Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types", RFC 2046, Innosoft, First Virtual, November 1996. [Quoted-Printable] Freed, Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 2045, Innosoft, First Virtual, November 1996. 14. Informative References [RICH] Resnick, Walker, "The text/enriched MIME Content-type", RFC 1896, QUALCOMM, InterCon, February 1996. [SMTP] Klensin, "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821, AT&T Laboratories, April 2001. 15. Author's Address Randall Gellens +1 858 651 5115 QUALCOMM Incorporated randy@qualcomm.com 5775 Morehouse Drive San Diego, CA 92121 Gellens [Page 16] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 USA Appendix A: Changes from RFC 2646 Substantive: o Added DelSp parameter to handle languages and coded character sets in which space is less common or not used. o Updated text on generating and interpreting to accommodate the DelSp parameter. o Added text on generating to clarify that the 79-character limit includes trailing white space and stuffing. o Added fmessage to ABNF. o Changed sig-sep in ABNF to allow stuffing. o Changed fixed-line to allow empty lines in ABNF. o Added explanatory text following ABNF. o Moved text from Abstract to new Introduction; rewrote Abstract. o Moved interoperability text to new section, and updated. o Clarified Security Considerations. Editorial: o Added mention of NeXT's mail application to Acknowledgments. o Updated Acknowledgments. o Updated [SMTP] reference to 2821. o Added Notices o Split References into Normative and Informative. The DelSp parameter was added specifically to permit Format=Flowed to be used with languages/coded character sets in which the ASCII space character is rarely used, or not used at all. The DelSp mechanism was selected despite having been initially rejected as far too much of a kludge, because among the many different techniques proposed, it allows for maximum interoperability among clients which support neither this specification nor RFC 2646, those which do support RFC 2646 but not this specification, and those that do support this specification; this set is multiplied by those that handle languages/coded character sets in which spaces are common, and in which they are uncommon or not used. Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. Copies of Gellens [Page 17] Expires August 2003 Internet Draft The Format Parameter February 2003 claims of rights made available for publication and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementors or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive Director. Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society 2003. All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Gellens [Page 18] Expires August 2003
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