Re: UTF-7 is dead

From: A. Vine (avine@eng.sun.com)
Date: Wed May 26 1999 - 18:44:02 EDT


Alain wrote:
>
> I made suggestions to several software makers that they should assume that
> the encoding of non-7-bit headers be assumed to be the same as the first
> text charset identified in a multi-part MIME message but I was qualified of
> being heretic by some very respected colleagues, because it would
> jeopardize the current goal to have the assumption be made that any 8-bit
> encoding in headers be that of UTF-8 in the future (given the asbence of
> tags).

Of course, when the recommendation is that the headers be in a different
encoding from the body (Korean - EUC-KR for the headers, ISO-2022-KR for the
body, and don't ask me why), this assumption becomes particularly problematic.

>
> I persist to believe that, if one can't assume that headers use the same
> encoding as the text message that follows (everybody knows, of course, that
> the user changes encodings constantly (; ), that:
>
> 1) MIME tags should exist to announce headers' encoding;
> 2) these tags should not be embedded in header's "text"

Well, you're probably right. Feel free to write an IETF draft to amend RFC
2047.

Incidentally, that standard has been used to encode filenames in attachments as
well...

Andrea

-- 
Andrea Vine
Sun Internet Mail Server i18n architect
avine@eng.sun.com
Romanes eunt domus.



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