Re: PROPOSAL: i74: Encoding for non-ASCII headers

Mark Nottingham wrote:
> 
> Based upon discussion, a proposal for closing i74:
> 
> * p1, section 2.2 -
> 
>> The TEXT rule is only used for descriptive field contents and values 
>> that are not intended to be interpreted by the message parser. Words 
>> of *TEXT MAY contain characters from character sets other than ISO- 
>> 8859-1 [ISO-8859-1] only when encoded according to the rules of 
>> [RFC2047].
> 
>   - remove the requirement that only RFC2047 encoding be used; instead, 
> recommend that context-specific encoding rules be used (giving 
> examples), and failing that, the \u'nnnnnn' form from BCP137.
>   - add new issues for dealing with specific circumstances (e.g., From, 
> Content-Disposition, Warning) as necessary.

I do agree with the goal of allowing new headers to use a saner format; 
and also recommending a specific one (such as RFC5137, Section 5.1).

Should the ABNF reflect this? Such as:

- for TEXT, state that it allows ISO8859, plus RFC2047-encoded stuff
- introduce something like ITEXT, using RFC5137, Section 5.1 format

..and then make sure that only those headers use TEXT where this is used 
in practice...

BR, Julian

Received on Tuesday, 25 March 2008 12:55:30 UTC