Re: Is the "Subject" field of an e-mail an obvious example of "plain text" where no higher level protocol application is possible?

From: Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela_at_cs.tut.fi>
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 20:25:14 +0300

2012-07-20 19:52, Philippe Verdy wrote:

> The "Subject" fi[el]d is subject to special encoding like
> Quoted-Printable or Base64 using specific prefixes.

This is a matter of character encoding. All plain text inevitably has
some encoding, and the encoding may vary without changing the plain text
status. Admittedly, QP and Base64 may be interpreted as being a
higher-level protocol, but they can be applied to any plain text, and I
don’t think this changes plain text to non-plain.

> Additionally it has specific formatting conventions related to the use
> of spaces and continuation lines if needed.

This is a real deviation from plain text principles and applies to
e-mail message headers in general. As per clause 2.2.3 of RFC 2822, the
header is logically a single line but may contain CR LF, which will be
unfolded.

Yucca
Received on Fri Jul 20 2012 - 12:28:09 CDT

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