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+Network Working Group                                       G. Vaudreuil
+Request for Comments: 1428                                          CNRI
+                                                           February 1993
+
+
+                   Transition of Internet Mail from
+                              Just-Send-8
+                           to 8bit-SMTP/MIME
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+   This RFC provides information for the Internet community.  It does
+   not specify an Internet standard.  Distribution of this memo is
+   unlimited.
+
+Abstract
+
+   Protocols for extending SMTP to pass 8bit characters have been
+   defined [3] [4]. These protocols require that messages transported by
+   the extended SMTP are to be encoded in MIME [1] [2].  Before work
+   began on these protocols, several SMTP implementations adopted ad-hoc
+   mechanisms for sending 8bit data. It is desirable for the extended
+   SMTP environment and these ad hoc mechanisms interoperate.  This
+   document outlines the problems in this environment and an approach to
+   minimizing the cost of transition from current usage of non-MIME 8bit
+   messages to MIME.
+
+1. Terminology
+
+   RFC 821 defines a 7bit transport.  A transport agent which does not
+   clear the high order bit upon receipt of octets with this bit set in
+   SMTP messages is called 8 bit transparent in this document. An
+   implementation of the general SMTP Extensions document [3] and the
+   8bit extensions protocol [4] which passes MIME messages using all 8
+   bits of an octet is called 8bit ESMTP.  An implementation of extended
+   SMTP which does not accept 8bit characters is called 7bit ESMTP.  A
+   gateway is defined to be a transport agent with User Agent authority
+   to alter or convert the content of a message.
+
+2. The Problem
+
+   SMTP as defined in RFC 821 limits the sending of Internet Mail to
+   US-ASCII [5] characters.  As the Internet has grown to include non-
+   English correspondents, the need to communicate with character sets
+   other than US-ASCII has prompted many vendors and users to extend
+   SMTP or RFC 822 to use non-ASCII character sets.  Common approaches
+   are to send 7 bit national variant ISO 646 character sets over
+   current RFC822/SMTP, to extend SMTP and RFC822 to use 8bit ISO 8859
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil                                                       [Page 1]
+
+RFC 1428              Transition to 8bit-SMTP/MIME         February 1993
+
+
+   character sets, and to use proprietary PC character sets.
+
+   A third approach is used for Japanese mail.  Japanese characters are
+   represented by pairs of octets with the high order bit cleared.
+   Switching between 14 bit character sets and 7 bit character sets is
+   indicated within the message by ISO 2022 escape sequences.
+
+   So long as these implementations can communicate without intermediate
+   transformations and have a loose private agreement on the use of a
+   specific character set without tagging, basic mail service can be
+   provided.
+
+   In the transition to the negotiated 8bit ESMTP/MIME environment, it
+   is important that mail sent by a currently non-conforming user can be
+   read by another non-conforming user.  This existing functionality is
+   reduced by conversion from 8bit text to text encoded in unreadable
+   Base-64 or "garbled" text encoded in quoted printable.
+
+   There are several interesting non-interoperable cases that currently
+   exist in non US-ASCII mail and several new ones likely to emerge in a
+   transition to 8bit/MIME.  Below is a listing of the transition-to-
+   mime cases.  Only solutions to (4) in the context of a translating
+   gateway are discussed in this memo.
+
+                \ Receiver
+                  \    7bit     8bit          MIME/
+             Sender \| only   | transparent | ESMTP
+           ----------------------------------------
+           7bit only |  (1)   |    (1)      | (1)
+           ----------------------------------------
+    8bit transparent |  (2)   |    (3)      | (4)
+           ----------------------------------------
+          MIME/ESMTP |  (5)   |    (5)      | (6)
+
+
+   (1) 7Bit non-MIME sender to 7bit, MIME, or 8bit transparent receiver
+
+      This will continue to work unchanged with nationally varient ISO
+      646 or ISO 2022 character set shifting if an external "out of
+      band" agreement exists between the sender and the receiver.  A
+      7bit to 8bit/ESMTP gateway need not alter the content of this
+      message.
+
+   (2) 8bit sender to 7bit non-MIME receiver
+
+      The receiver will receive bit-stripped mail which results in the
+      mis-interpretation of the data and the wrong character being
+      displayed or printed.  Mail sent using languages where most
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil                                                       [Page 2]
+
+RFC 1428              Transition to 8bit-SMTP/MIME         February 1993
+
+
+      characters are in the US-ASCII subset of ISO 8859 may be somewhat
+      readable.
+
+   (3) 8bit transparent sender to 8bit transparent receiver
+
+      Will work if an external agreement "out of band" to use a
+      particular character set without tagging exists between the sender
+      and the receiver.
+
+   (4) 8bit transparent sender to MIME/ESMTP conformant receiver
+
+      Will work if a reasonable upgrade path is provided via gateways,
+      the indicated character set tag inserted by the gateway is correct
+      and the receiver supports the character set chosen by the sender.
+      This case is the focus of this memo.
+
+   (5) MIME/ESMTP sender to non-MIME 7bit receiver
+
+      Because the ESMTP/MIME sender cannot know if the receiver will
+      understand 8bits, the sender will encode the text into base-64 or
+      quoted-printable which may be considered "garbled" by the
+      receiver.  To provide a useful downgrade path the gateway must
+      have some knowledge about the capabilities of the receiver. When
+      the character set can be clearly identified, techniques like the
+      menmonic MNEM encoding described in RFC 1345 may be helpful in
+      this case.
+
+   (6) MIME/ESMTP sender to MIME/ESMTP receiver
+
+      Interoperability will be attained provided the receiver supports
+      the character set chosen by the sender.
+
+3. Upgrade Path from 8bit Transparent to ESMTP/MIME
+
+   A gateway which has been upgraded to support Extended SMTP may
+   upgrade an 8bit message received to MIME.  This is consistent with
+   the requirement that all 8bit mail sent by ESMTP be encoded in MIME.
+   The upgrade should be done using the best available information.
+
+   A site may "upgrade" to MIME en-masse by implementing MIME conversion
+   for all messages leaving the site.  For text messages, the body can
+   be converted by adding a MIME-version header and a Content-Type:
+   Text/Plain with the character set in use in the site, provided the
+   site uses a single character set.
+
+   An appropriate Content-Transfer-Encoding header line must be added to
+   indicate any encoding that may be necessary.
+
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil                                                       [Page 3]
+
+RFC 1428              Transition to 8bit-SMTP/MIME         February 1993
+
+
+    Example:
+
+       MIME-Version: 1.0
+       Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset = ISO-8859-1
+       Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
+
+   If no information about the character set in use is available, the
+   gateway should upgrade the content by using the character set
+   "unknown-8bit". The unknown-8bit value of the charset parameter
+   indicates only that no reliable information about the character
+   set(s) used in the message was available.
+
+   If a message body has been upgraded to MIME, the RFC 822 headers
+   containing non US-ASCII characters must be upgraded to conform with
+   the header encoding rules of RFC1342. A gateway should recode all
+   unstructered header fields as well as RFC 822 "comment"s and
+   "phrase"s according to the rules of RFC 1342. There is no equivalent
+   in RFC 1342 to the "8bit" Content-Transfer-Encoding value for message
+   bodies so all 8bit header text must be transformed according to
+   either the "B" or the "Q" encoding method.  For ISO 8859 character
+   sets, the "Q" encoding will generally result in somewhat readable
+   headers.
+
+   Trace information should be added to the document with a convert
+   clause: "rfc822-to-8bit", "rfc822-to-base-64" or "rfc822-to-quoted-
+   printable" e.g.,
+
+   Received: from dbc.mtview.ca.us by dbc.mtview.ca.us
+             convert rfc822-to-8bit; Tue, 01 Sep 1992 01:18:00 -0700
+
+Appendix - The "unknown-8bit" Character Set
+
+   This section defines a "charset" parameter, for use in a MIME
+   Content-Type field.
+
+   A special purpose character set called "unknown-8bit" is defined to
+   be an unknown 8bit character set, encoded into a sequence of octets.
+   It can be used as a label for any character set from any language,
+   using any encoding.  It must not be further defined.
+
+   The use of this token in a "charset=" field of a message indicates
+   that nothing is known about the character set used. This marker is
+   intended for use by non-MIME to MIME gateways; specifically in those
+   which translate from SMTP to 8bit ESMTP/MIME.
+
+   This character set is not intended to be used by mail composers.  It
+   is assumed that the mail composer knows the character set in use and
+   will mark it with a character set value as specified in [1], as
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil                                                       [Page 4]
+
+RFC 1428              Transition to 8bit-SMTP/MIME         February 1993
+
+
+   amended by current Assigned Numbers documents [6].
+
+   The use of the "unknown-8bit" label is intended only by mail gateway
+   agents which cannot determine via out-of-band information the
+   intended character set.
+
+   The interpretation of the "unknown-8bit" is up to the mail reader.
+   It is assumed that in many cases the human user will be able to
+   interpret the information and choose an appropriate character set or
+   pre-processor.
+
+Acknowledgements
+
+   This document originated as a hallway conversation between Ned Freed,
+   Neil Katin, and the author.  Substantive input was received from
+   Jonathan Laventhol, Craig Everhart, Olle Jarnefors, and Olafur
+   Gudmundsson.  The document was refined with the input of many
+   participants in the IETF SMTP Extensions Working Group.
+
+References
+
+   [1] Borenstein, N., and N. Freed, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
+       Extensions", RFC 1341, Bellcore, Innosoft, June 1992.
+
+   [2] Moore, K., "Representation of Non-ASCII Text in Internet Message
+       Headers", RFC 1342, University of Tennessee, June 1992.
+
+   [3] Klensin, J., WG Chair, Freed, N., Editor, Rose, M., Stefferud,
+       E., and D. Crocker, "SMTP Service Extensions" RFC 1425, United
+       Nations University, Innosoft International, Inc., Dover Beach
+       Consulting, Inc., Network Management Associates, Inc., The Branch
+       Office, February 1993.
+
+   [4] Klensin, J., WG Chair, Freed, N., Editor, Rose, M., Stefferud,
+       E., and D. Crocker, "SMTP Service Extensions for 8bit
+       MIMEtransport", RFC 1426, United Nations University, Innosoft
+       International, Inc., Dover Beach Consulting, Inc., Network
+       Management Associates, Inc., The Branch Office, February 1993.
+
+   [5] Coded Character Set--7-Bit American Standard Code for Information
+       Interchange, ANSI X3.4-1986.
+
+   [6] Reynolds, J., and J. Postel, "Assigned Numbers", STD 2, RFC 1340,
+       USC/Information Sciences Institute, July 1992.
+
+Security Considerations
+
+   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
+
+
+
+Vaudreuil                                                       [Page 5]
+
+RFC 1428              Transition to 8bit-SMTP/MIME         February 1993
+
+
+Author's Address
+
+   Greg Vaudreuil
+   Corporation for National Research Initiatives
+   1895 Preston White Drive, Suite 100
+   Reston, VA 22091 USA
+
+   Phone: (703) 620-8990
+   EMail: GVaudre@CNRI.Reston.VA.US
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+Vaudreuil                                                       [Page 6]
+
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