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Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic)

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mysql.jorge at decimal

Sep 29, 2009, 8:20 AM

Post #1 of 7 (1140 views)
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Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic)

Hi there,

Paul/others,

Can you point me to the IETF link where it says that the emails headers MUST
be encoded and never in PLAIN ASCII?

Thanks!

Jorge,

shane at time-travellers

Sep 29, 2009, 2:10 PM

Post #2 of 7 (1078 views)
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Re: Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic) [In reply to]

Jorge,

On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 16:22 +0100, Jorge Bastos wrote:

> Can you point me to the IETF link where it says that the emails
> headers MUST be encoded and never in PLAIN ASCII?

Must they?

I have been getting familiar with the IMAP RFC lately, and it says this:

Note that headers (part specifiers HEADER or MIME, or the
header portion of a MESSAGE/RFC822 part), MUST be 7-bit; 8-bit
characters are not permitted in headers.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3501.html

--
Shane

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michael.monnerie at is

Sep 29, 2009, 2:28 PM

Post #3 of 7 (1083 views)
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Re: Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic) [In reply to]

On Dienstag 29 September 2009 Shane Kerr wrote:
> I have been getting familiar with the IMAP RFC lately, and it says
> this:
>
> Note that headers (part specifiers HEADER or MIME, or the
> header portion of a MESSAGE/RFC822 part), MUST be 7-bit;
> 8-bit characters are not permitted in headers.
>
> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3501.html

A bit off-topic, but:
Nice, but there are programs with bugs that generate 8bit headers,
namely that Outlook extension that gives the users fancy backgrounds and
funny pics to add... what's it's name? Erhmmm... Incredimail.
That stupid program, for german setups, creates a time header like this:
10:37 Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit
meaning mid-european summer time - see the umlaut-a (ä) there.

mfg zmi
--
// Michael Monnerie, Ing.BSc ----- http://it-management.at
// Tel: 0660 / 415 65 31 .network.your.ideas.
// PGP Key: "curl -s http://zmi.at/zmi.asc | gpg --import"
// Fingerprint: AC19 F9D5 36ED CD8A EF38 500E CE14 91F7 1C12 09B4
// Keyserver: wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net Key-ID: 1C1209B4

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mysql.jorge at decimal

Sep 29, 2009, 2:43 PM

Post #4 of 7 (1083 views)
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Re: Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic) [In reply to]

> Jorge,
>
> On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 16:22 +0100, Jorge Bastos wrote:
>
> > Can you point me to the IETF link where it says that the emails
> > headers MUST be encoded and never in PLAIN ASCII?
>
> Must they?
>
> I have been getting familiar with the IMAP RFC lately, and it says
> this:
>
> Note that headers (part specifiers HEADER or MIME, or the
> header portion of a MESSAGE/RFC822 part), MUST be 7-bit; 8-bit
> characters are not permitted in headers.
>
> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3501.html

For full compability I believe so, I may be wrong, but I do believe so.

Thanks for the link :)

Jorge,

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mysql.jorge at decimal

Sep 29, 2009, 2:44 PM

Post #5 of 7 (1081 views)
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Re: Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic) [In reply to]

> A bit off-topic, but:
> Nice, but there are programs with bugs that generate 8bit headers,
> namely that Outlook extension that gives the users fancy backgrounds
> and
> funny pics to add... what's it's name? Erhmmm... Incredimail.
> That stupid program, for german setups, creates a time header like
> this:
> 10:37 Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit
> meaning mid-european summer time - see the umlaut-a (ä) there.

I do HATE INCREDIMAIL :)
I believe MSO2007 for example, works OK with 8-bit headers, but only
sometimes.
Anyway I think it's better to use the fields encoded.

Jorge,

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paul at nfg

Sep 30, 2009, 12:27 AM

Post #6 of 7 (1083 views)
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Re: Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic) [In reply to]

Shane Kerr wrote:
> Jorge,
>
> On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 16:22 +0100, Jorge Bastos wrote:
>
>> Can you point me to the IETF link where it says that the emails
>> headers MUST be encoded and never in PLAIN ASCII?

Plain ASCII is always OK! Only non-ascii characters should be encoded.

>
> Must they?
>
> I have been getting familiar with the IMAP RFC lately, and it says this:
>
> Note that headers (part specifiers HEADER or MIME, or the
> header portion of a MESSAGE/RFC822 part), MUST be 7-bit; 8-bit
> characters are not permitted in headers.
>
> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3501.html

That rfc snippet doesn't say anything about message structure, just
about IMAP responses. The reference for message structure is rfc5322

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322

while the latest RFC dealing with non-ascii text in headers is

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2047

Even though formally 8bit headers are not allowed, it was decided long
ago to liberally accept such headers. Dbmail doesn't care one way or the
other. However, FETCH responses containing part specifiers HEADER or
MIME must by 7-bit.

I'm pretty sure dbmail is not compliant here. I havent verified, but
reading the code (which I wrote three years ago or so) it looks like
we're returning HEADER and MIME parts as-is.

--
________________________________________________________________
Paul Stevens paul at nfg.nl
NET FACILITIES GROUP GPG/PGP: 1024D/11F8CD31
The Netherlands________________________________http://www.nfg.nl
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mysql.jorge at decimal

Sep 30, 2009, 3:21 AM

Post #7 of 7 (1081 views)
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Re: Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic) [In reply to]

Your explanation is perfect Paul!

This was for something else, to explain somebody with physical evidences
(the links), that the person was wrong!

Many thanks,
Jorge,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dbmail-bounces [at] dbmail [mailto:dbmail-bounces [at] dbmail] On
> Behalf Of Paul J Stevens
> Sent: quarta-feira, 30 de Setembro de 2009 8:28
> To: DBMail mailinglist
> Subject: Re: [Dbmail] Standard for encoded headers (Offtopic)
>
> Shane Kerr wrote:
> > Jorge,
> >
> > On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 16:22 +0100, Jorge Bastos wrote:
> >
> >> Can you point me to the IETF link where it says that the emails
> >> headers MUST be encoded and never in PLAIN ASCII?
>
> Plain ASCII is always OK! Only non-ascii characters should be encoded.
>
> >
> > Must they?
> >
> > I have been getting familiar with the IMAP RFC lately, and it says
> this:
> >
> > Note that headers (part specifiers HEADER or MIME, or the
> > header portion of a MESSAGE/RFC822 part), MUST be 7-bit; 8-
> bit
> > characters are not permitted in headers.
> >
> > http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3501.html
>
> That rfc snippet doesn't say anything about message structure, just
> about IMAP responses. The reference for message structure is rfc5322
>
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322
>
> while the latest RFC dealing with non-ascii text in headers is
>
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2047
>
> Even though formally 8bit headers are not allowed, it was decided long
> ago to liberally accept such headers. Dbmail doesn't care one way or
> the
> other. However, FETCH responses containing part specifiers HEADER or
> MIME must by 7-bit.
>
> I'm pretty sure dbmail is not compliant here. I havent verified, but
> reading the code (which I wrote three years ago or so) it looks like
> we're returning HEADER and MIME parts as-is.
>
> --
> ________________________________________________________________
> Paul Stevens paul at nfg.nl
> NET FACILITIES GROUP GPG/PGP: 1024D/11F8CD31
> The Netherlands________________________________http://www.nfg.nl
> _______________________________________________
> DBmail mailing list
> DBmail [at] dbmail
> http://mailman.fastxs.nl/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dbmail

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