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Beyond plain text, there are many formats for representing what might be known as "extended text" -- text with embedded formatting and presentation information. An interesting characteristic of many such representations is that they are to some extent readable even without the software that interprets them. It is useful, then, to distinguish them, at the highest level, from such unreadable data as images, audio, or text represented in an unreadable form. In the absence of appropriate interpretation software, it is reasonable to show subtypes of text to the user, while it is not reasonable to do so with most nontextual data.
Such formatted textual data should be represented using subtypes of text. Plausible subtypes of text are typically given by the common name of the representation format, e.g., "text/richtext" [RFC-1341].
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Unlike some other parameter values, the values of the charset parameter are NOT case sensitive. The default character set, which must be assumed in the absence of a charset parameter, is US-ASCII.
The specification for any future subtypes of "text" must specify whether or not they will also utilize a "charset" parameter, and may possibly restrict its values as well. When used with a particular body, the semantics of the "charset" parameter should be identical to those specified here for "text/plain", i.e., the body consists entirely of characters in the given charset. In particular, definers of future text subtypes should pay close attention the the implications of multibyte character sets for their subtype definitions.
This RFC specifies the definition of the charset parameter for the purposes of MIME to be a unique mapping of a byte stream to glyphs, a mapping which does not require external profiling information.
An initial list of predefined character set names can be found at the end of this section. Additional character sets may be registered with IANA, although the standardization of their use requires the usual IESG [RFC-1340] review and approval. Note that if the specified character set includes 8-bit data, a Content-Transfer-Encoding header field and a corresponding encoding on the data are required in order to transmit the body via some mail transfer protocols, such as SMTP.
The default character set, US-ASCII, has been the subject of some confusion and ambiguity in the past. Not only were there some ambiguities in the definition, there have been wide variations in practice. In order to eliminate such ambiguity and variations in the future, it is strongly recommended that new user agents explicitly specify a character set via the Content-Type header field. "US-ASCII" does not indicate an arbitrary seven-bit character code, but specifies that the body uses character coding that uses the exact correspondence of codes to characters specified in ASCII. National use variations of ISO 646 [ISO-646] are NOT ASCII and their use in Internet mail is explicitly discouraged. The omission of the ISO 646 character set is deliberate in this regard. The character set name of "US-ASCII" explicitly refers to ANSI X3.4-1986 [US-ASCII] only. The character set name "ASCII" is reserved and must not be used for any purpose.
The complete US-ASCII character set is listed in [US-ASCII]. Note that the control characters including DEL (0-31, 127) have no defined meaning apart from the combination CRLF (ASCII values 13 and 10) indicating a new line. Two of the characters have de facto meanings in wide use: FF (12) often means "start subsequent text on the beginning of a new page"; and TAB or HT (9) often (though not always) means "move the cursor to the next available column after the current position where the column number is a multiple of 8 (counting the first column as column 0)." Apart from this, any use of the control characters or DEL in a body must be part of a private agreement between the sender and recipient. Such private agreements are discouraged and should be replaced by the other capabilities of this document.
The defined charset values are:
The character sets specified above are the ones that were relatively uncontroversial during the drafting of MIME. This document does not endorse the use of any particular character set other than US-ASCII, and recognizes that the future evolution of world character sets remains unclear. It is expected that in the future, additional character sets will be registered for use in MIME.
Note that the character set used, if anything other than US-ASCII, must always be explicitly specified in the Content-Type field.
No other character set name may be used in Internet mail without the publication of a formal specification and its registration with IANA, or by private agreement, in which case the character set name must begin with "X-".
Implementors are discouraged from defining new character sets for mail use unless absolutely necessary.
The "charset" parameter has been defined primarily for the purpose of textual data, and is described in this section for that reason. However, it is conceivable that non-textual data might also wish to specify a charset value for some purpose, in which case the same syntax and values should be used.
In general, mail-sending software must always use the "lowest common denominator" character set possible. For example, if a body contains only US-ASCII characters, it must be marked as being in the US-ASCII character set, not ISO-8859-1, which, like all the ISO-8859 family of character sets, is a superset of US-ASCII. More generally, if a widely-used character set is a subset of another character set, and a body contains only characters in the widely-used subset, it must be labeled as being in that subset. This will increase the chances that the recipient will be able to view the mail correctly.
No other text subtype is defined by this document.
The formal grammar for the content-type header field for text is as follows:
text-type := "text" "/" text-subtype [";" "charset" "=" charset]
text-subtype := "plain" / extension-token
charset := "us-ascii"/ "iso-8859-1"/ "iso-8859-2"/ "iso-8859-3"
/ "iso-8859-4"/ "iso-8859-5"/ "iso-8859-6"/ "iso-8859-7"
/ "iso-8859-8" / "iso-8859-9" / extension-token
; case insensitive
A body part is NOT to be interpreted as actually being an RFC 822 message. To begin with, NO header fields are actually required in body parts. A body part that starts with a blank line, therefore, is allowed and is a body part for which all default values are to be assumed. In such a case, the absence of a Content-Type header field implies that the corresponding body is plain US-ASCII text. The only header fields that have defined meaning for body parts are those the names of which begin with "Content-". All other header fields are generally to be ignored in body parts. Although they should generally be retained in mail processing, they may be discarded by gateways if necessary. Such other fields are permitted to appear in body parts but must not be depended on. "X-" fields may be created for experimental or private purposes, with the recognition that the information they contain may be lost at some gateways.
As stated previously, each body part is preceded by an encapsulation boundary. The encapsulation boundary MUST NOT appear inside any of the encapsulated parts. Thus, it is crucial that the composing agent be able to choose and specify the unique boundary that will separate the parts.
All present and future subtypes of the "multipart" type must use an identical syntax. Subtypes may differ in their semantics, and may impose additional restrictions on syntax, but must conform to the required syntax for the multipart type. This requirement ensures that all conformant user agents will at least be able to recognize and separate the parts of any multipart entity, even of an unrecognized subtype.
As stated in the definition of the Content-Transfer-Encoding field, no encoding other than "7bit", "8bit", or "binary" is permitted for entities of type "multipart". The multipart delimiters and header fields are always represented as 7-bit ASCII in any case (though the header fields may encode non-ASCII header text as per [RFC-1522]), and data within the body parts can be encoded on a part-by-part basis, with Content-Transfer-Encoding fields for each appropriate body part.
Mail gateways, relays, and other mail handling agents are commonly known to alter the top-level header of an RFC 822 message. In particular, they frequently add, remove, or reorder header fields. Such alterations are explicitly forbidden for the body part headers embedded in the bodies of messages of type "multipart."
The Content-Type field for multipart entities requires one parameter, "boundary", which is used to specify the encapsulation boundary. The encapsulation boundary is defined as a line consisting entirely of two hyphen characters ("-", decimal code 45) followed by the boundary parameter value from the Content-Type header field.
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary=gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p
But the following is illegal:
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary=gc0p4Jq0M:2Yt08jU534c0p
(because of the colon) and must instead be represented as
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="gc0p4Jq0M:2Yt08jU534c0p"
This indicates that the entity consists of several parts, each itself with a structure that is syntactically identical to an RFC 822 message, except that the header area might be completely empty, and that the parts are each preceded by the line
--gc0p4Jq0M:2Yt08jU534c0p
Note that the encapsulation boundary must occur at the beginning of a line, i.e., following a CRLF, and that the initial CRLF is considered to be attached to the encapsulation boundary rather than part of the preceding part. The boundary must be followed immediately either by another CRLF and the header fields for the next part, or by two CRLFs, in which case there are no header fields for the next part (and it is therefore assumed to be of Content-Type text/plain).
Encapsulation boundaries must not appear within the encapsulations, and must be no longer than 70 characters, not counting the two leading hyphens.
The encapsulation boundary following the last body part is a distinguished delimiter that indicates that no further body parts will follow. Such a delimiter is identical to the previous delimiters, with the addition of two more hyphens at the end of the line:
--gc0p4Jq0M2Yt08jU534c0p--
There appears to be room for additional information prior to the first encapsulation boundary and following the final boundary. These areas should generally be left blank, and implementations must ignore anything that appears before the first boundary or after the last one.
As a very simple example, the following multipart message has two parts, both of them plain text, one of them explicitly typed and one of them implicitly typed:
From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@bellcore.com>
To: Ned Freed <ned@innosoft.com>
Subject: Sample message
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="simple boundary"
This is the preamble. It is to be ignored, though it
is a handy place for mail composers to include an
explanatory note to non-MIME conformant readers.
--simple boundary
This is implicitly typed plain ASCII text.
It does NOT end with a linebreak.
--simple boundary
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
This is explicitly typed plain ASCII text.
It DOES end with a linebreak.
--simple boundary--
This is the epilogue. It is also to be ignored.
The use of a Content-Type of multipart in a body part within another multipart entity is explicitly allowed. In such cases, for obvious reasons, care must be taken to ensure that each nested multipart entity must use a different boundary delimiter. See Appendix C for an example of nested multipart entities.
The use of the multipart Content-Type with only a single body part may be useful in certain contexts, and is explicitly permitted.
The only mandatory parameter for the multipart Content-Type is the boundary parameter, which consists of 1 to 70 characters from a set of characters known to be very robust through email gateways, and NOT ending with white space. (If a boundary appears to end with white space, the white space must be presumed to have been added by a gateway, and must be deleted.) It is formally specified by the following BNF:
boundary := 0*69<bchars> bcharsnospace
bchars := bcharsnospace / " "
bcharsnospace := DIGIT / ALPHA / "'" / "(" / ")" / "+" /"_"
/ "," / "-" / "." / "/" / ":" / "=" / "?"
Overall, the body of a multipart entity may be specified as
follows:
multipart-body := preamble 1*encapsulation
close-delimiter epilogue
encapsulation := delimiter body-part CRLF
delimiter := "--" boundary CRLF ; taken from Content-Type field.
; There must be no space
; between "--" and boundary.
close-delimiter := "--" boundary "--" CRLF ; Again, no space
by "--",
preamble := discard-text ; to be ignored upon receipt.
epilogue := discard-text ; to be ignored upon receipt.
discard-text := *(*text CRLF)
body-part := <"message" as defined in RFC 822,
with all header fields optional, and with the
specified delimiter not occurring anywhere in
the message body, either on a line by itself
or as a substring anywhere. Note that the
semantics of a part differ from the semantics
of a message, as described in the text.>
Systems should recognize that the content of the various parts are interchangeable. Systems should choose the "best" type based on the local environment and preferences, in some cases even through user interaction. As with multipart/mixed, the order of body parts is significant. In this case, the alternatives appear in an order of increasing faithfulness to the original content. In general, the best choice is the LAST part of a type supported by the recipient system's local environment.
Multipart/alternative may be used, for example, to send mail in a fancy text format in such a way that it can easily be displayed anywhere:
From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@bellcore.com>
To: Ned Freed <ned@innosoft.com>
Subject: Formatted text mail
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=boundary42
--boundary42
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
...plain text version of message goes here....
--boundary42
Content-Type: text/richtext
.... RFC 1341 richtext version of same message goes here ...
--boundary42
Content-Type: text/x-whatever
.... fanciest formatted version of same message goes here
...
--boundary42--
In this example, users whose mail system understood the "text/x- whatever" format would see only the fancy version, while other users would see only the richtext or plain text version, depending on the capabilities of their system.
In general, user agents that compose multipart/alternative entities must place the body parts in increasing order of preference, that is, with the preferred format last. For fancy text, the sending user agent should put the plainest format first and the richest format last. Receiving user agents should pick and display the last format they are capable of displaying. In the case where one of the alternatives is itself of type "multipart" and contains unrecognized sub-parts, the user agent may choose either to show that alternative, an earlier alternative, or both.
It may be the case that some user agents, if they can recognize more than one of the formats, will prefer to offer the user the choice of which format to view. This makes sense, for example, if mail includes both a nicely-formatted image version and an easily-edited text version. What is most critical, however, is that the user not automatically be shown multiple versions of the same data. Either the user should be shown the last recognized version or should be given the choice.
A digest in this format might, then, look something like this:
From: Moderator-Address
To: Recipient-List
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Internet Digest, volume 42
Content-Type: multipart/digest;
boundary="---- next message ----"
------ next message ----
From: someone-else
Subject: my opinion
...body goes here ...
------ next message ----
From: someone-else-again
Subject: my different opinion
... another body goes here...
------ next message ------
A common presentation of this type is to display all of the parts simultaneously on hardware and software that are capable of doing so. However, composing agents should be aware that many mail readers will lack this capability and will show the parts serially in any event.
The formal grammar for content-type header fields for multipart data is given by:
multipart-type := "multipart" "/" multipart-subtype
";" "boundary" "=" boundary
multipart-subtype := "mixed" / "parallel" / "digest"
/ "alternative" / extension-token
As stated in the definition of the Content-Transfer-Encoding field, no encoding other than "7bit", "8bit", or "binary" is permitted for messages or parts of type "message". Even stronger restrictions apply to the subtypes "message/partial" and "message/external-body", as specified below. The message header fields are always US-ASCII in any case, and data within the body can still be encoded, in which case the Content-Transfer-Encoding header field in the encapsulated message will reflect this. Non-ASCII text in the headers of an encapsulated message can be specified using the mechanisms described in [RFC-1522].
Mail gateways, relays, and other mail handling agents are commonly known to alter the top-level header of an RFC 822 message. In particular, they frequently add, remove, or reorder header fields. Such alterations are explicitly forbidden for the encapsulated headers embedded in the bodies of messages of type "message."
It should be noted that, despite the use of the numbers "822", a message/rfc822 entity can include enhanced information as defined in this document. In other words, a message/rfc822 message may be a MIME message.
Three parameters must be specified in the Content-Type field of type message/partial: The first, "id", is a unique identifier, as close to a world-unique identifier as possible, to be used to match the parts together. (In general, the identifier is essentially a message-id; if placed in double quotes, it can be any message-id, in accordance with the BNF for "parameter" given earlier in this specification.) The second, "number", an integer, is the part number, which indicates where this part fits into the sequence of fragments. The third, "total", another integer, is the total number of parts. This third subfield is required on the final part, and is optional (though encouraged) on the earlier parts. Note also that these parameters may be given in any order.
Thus, part 2 of a 3-part message may have either of the following header fields:
Content-Type: Message/Partial;
number=2; total=3;
id="oc=jpbe0M2Yt4s@thumper.bellcore.com"
Content-Type: Message/Partial;
id="oc=jpbe0M2Yt4s@thumper.bellcore.com";
number=2
But part 3 MUST specify the total number of parts:
Content-Type: Message/Partial;
number=3; total=3;
id="oc=jpbe0M2Yt4s@thumper.bellcore.com"
Note that part numbering begins with 1, not 0.
When the parts of a message broken up in this manner are put together, the result is a complete MIME entity, which may have its own Content-Type header field, and thus may contain any other data type.
Message fragmentation and reassembly: The semantics of a reassembled partial message must be those of the "inner" message, rather than of a message containing the inner message. This makes it possible, for example, to send a large audio message as several partial messages, and still have it appear to the recipient as a simple audio message rather than as an encapsulated message containing an audio message. That is, the encapsulation of the message is considered to be "transparent".
When generating and reassembling the parts of a message/partial message, the headers of the encapsulated message must be merged with the headers of the enclosing entities. In this process the following rules must be observed:
For example, if an audio message is broken into two parts, the first part might look something like this:
X-Weird-Header-1: Foo
From: Bill@host.com
To: joe@otherhost.com
Subject: Audio mail
Message-ID: <id1@host.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: message/partial;
id="ABC@host.com";
number=1; total=2
X-Weird-Header-1: Bar
X-Weird-Header-2: Hello
Message-ID: <anotherid@foo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: audio/basic
Content-transfer-encoding: base64
... first half of encoded audio data goes here...
and the second half might look something like this:
From: Bill@host.com
To: joe@otherhost.com
Subject: Audio mail
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <id2@host.com>
Content-type: message/partial;
id="ABC@host.com"; number=2; total=2
... second half of encoded audio data goes here...
Then, when the fragmented message is reassembled, the resulting message to be displayed to the user should look something like this:
X-Weird-Header-1: Foo
From: Bill@host.com
To: joe@otherhost.com
Subject: Audio mail
Message-ID: <anotherid@foo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: audio/basic
Content-transfer-encoding: base64
... first half of encoded audio data goes here...
... second half of encoded audio data goes here...
Note on encoding of MIME entities encapsulated inside message/partial entities: Because data of type "message" may never be encoded in base64 or quoted-printable, a problem might arise if message/partial entities are constructed in an environment that supports binary or 8-bit transport. The problem is that the binary data would be split into multiple message/partial objects, each of them requiring binary transport. If such objects were encountered at a gateway into a 7-bit transport environment, there would be no way to properly encode them for the 7-bit world, aside from waiting for all of the parts, reassembling the message, and then encoding the reassembled data in base64 or quoted-printable. Since it is possible that different parts might go through different gateways, even this is not an acceptable solution. For this reason, it is specified that MIME entities of type message/partial must always have a content-transfer-encoding of 7-bit (the default). In particular, even in environments that support binary or 8-bit transport, the use of a content-transfer-encoding of "8bit" or "binary" is explicitly prohibited for entities of type message/partial.
It should be noted that, because some message transfer agents may choose to automatically fragment large messages, and because such agents may use different fragmentation thresholds, it is possible that the pieces of a partial message, upon reassembly, may prove themselves to comprise a partial message. This is explicitly permitted.
It should also be noted that the inclusion of a "References" field in the headers of the second and subsequent pieces of a fragmented message that references the Message-Id on the previous piece may be of benefit to mail readers that understand and track references. However, the generation of such "References" fields is entirely optional.
Finally, it should be noted that the "Encrypted" header field has been made obsolete by Privacy Enhanced Messaging (PEM), but the rules above are believed to describe the correct way to treat it if it is encountered in the context of conversion to and from message/partial fragments.
When an entity is of type "message/external-body", it consists of a header, two consecutive CRLFs, and the message header for the encapsulated message. If another pair of consecutive CRLFs appears, this of course ends the message header for the encapsulated message. However, since the encapsulated message's body is itself external, it does NOT appear in the area that follows. For example, consider the following message:
Content-type: message/external-body; access-
type=local-file;
name="/u/nsb/Me.gif"
Content-type: image/gif
Content-ID: <id42@guppylake.bellcore.com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
THIS IS NOT REALLY THE BODY!
The area at the end, which might be called the "phantom body", is ignored for most external-body messages. However, it may be used to contain auxiliary information for some such messages, as indeed it is when the access-type is "mail-server". Of the access-types defined by this document, the phantom body is used only when the access-type is "mail-server". In all other cases, the phantom body is ignored.
The only always-mandatory parameter for message/external-body is "access-type"; all of the other parameters may be mandatory or optional depending on the value of access-type.
In addition, the following three parameters are optional for ALL access-types:
The precise semantics of the access-types defined here are described in the sections that follow.
The encapsulated headers in ALL message/external-body entities MUST include a Content-ID header field to give a unique identifier by which to reference the data. This identifier may be used for cacheing mechanisms, and for recognizing the receipt of the data when the access-type is "mail-server".
Note that, as specified here, the tokens that describe external-body data, such as file names and mail server commands, are required to be in the US-ASCII character set. If this proves problematic in practice, a new mechanism may be required as a future extension to MIME, either as newly defined access-types for message/external-body or by some other mechanism.
As with message/partial, it is specified that MIME entities of type message/external-body must always have a content-transfer-encoding of 7-bit (the default). In particular, even in environments that support binary or 8-bit transport, the use of a content-transfer- encoding of "8bit" or "binary" is explicitly prohibited for entities of type message/external-body.
Before any data are retrieved, using FTP, the user will generally need to be asked to provide a login id and a password for the machine named by the site parameter. For security reasons, such an id and password are not specified as content-type parameters, but must be obtained from the user.
In addition, the following parameters are optional:
The following optional parameter may be used to describe the locality of reference for the data, that is, the site or sites at which the file is expected to be visible:
Because mail servers accept a variety of syntaxes, some of which is multiline, the full command to be sent to a mail server is not included as a parameter on the content-type line. Instead, it is provided as the "phantom body" when the content-type is message/external-body and the access- type is mail-server.
An optional parameter for this access-type is:
Note that MIME does not define a mail server syntax. Rather, it allows the inclusion of arbitrary mail server commands in the phantom body. Implementations must include the phantom body in the body of the message it sends to the mail server address to retrieve the relevant data.
It is worth noting that, unlike other access-types, mail-server access is asynchronous and will happen at an unpredictable time in the future. For this reason, it is important that there be a mechanism by which the returned data can be matched up with the original message/external-body entity. MIME mailservers must use the same Content-ID field on the returned message that was used in the original message/external-body entity, to facilitate such matching.
However, the external-body mechanism is not intended to be limited to file retrieval, as shown by the mail-server access-type. Beyond this, one can imagine, for example, using a video server for external references to video clips.
If an entity is of type "message/external-body", then the body of the entity will contain the header fields of the encapsulated message. The body itself is to be found in the external location. This means that if the body of the "message/external-body" message contains two consecutive CRLFs, everything after those pairs is NOT part of the message itself. For most message/external-body messages, this trailing area must simply be ignored. However, it is a convenient place for additional data that cannot be included in the content-type header field. In particular, if the "access-type" value is "mail-server", then the trailing area must contain commands to be sent to the mail server at the address given by the value of the SERVER parameter.
The embedded message header fields which appear in the body of the message/external-body data must be used to declare the Content-type of the external body if it is anything other than plain ASCII text, since the external body does not have a header section to declare its type. Similarly, any Content-transfer-encoding other than "7bit" must also be declared here. Thus a complete message/external-body message, referring to a document in PostScript format, might look like this:
From: Whomever
To: Someone
Subject: whatever
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <id1@host.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=42
Content-ID: <id001@guppylake.bellcore.com>
--42
Content-Type: message/external-body;
name="BodyFormats.ps";
site="thumper.bellcore.com";
access-type=ANON-FTP;
directory="pub";
mode="image";
expiration="Fri, 14 Jun 1991 19:13:14 -0400 (EDT)"
Content-type: application/postscript
Content-ID: <id42@guppylake.bellcore.com>
--42
Content-Type: message/external-body;
name="/u/nsb/writing/rfcs/RFC-MIME.ps";
site="thumper.bellcore.com";
access-type=AFS
expiration="Fri, 14 Jun 1991 19:13:14 -0400 (EDT)"
Content-type: application/postscript
Content-ID: <id42@guppylake.bellcore.com>
--42
Content-Type: message/external-body;
access-type=mail-server
server="listserv@bogus.bitnet";
expiration="Fri, 14 Jun 1991 19:13:14 -0400 (EDT)"
Content-type: application/postscript
Content-ID: <id42@guppylake.bellcore.com>
get RFC-MIME.DOC
--42--
Note that in the above examples, the default Content-transfer- encoding of "7bit" is assumed for the external postscript data.
Like the message/partial type, the message/external-body type is intended to be transparent, that is, to convey the data type in the external body rather than to convey a message with a body of that type. Thus the headers on the outer and inner parts must be merged using the same rules as for message/partial. In particular, this means that the Content-type header is overridden, but the From and Subject headers are preserved.
Note that since the external bodies are not transported as mail, they need not conform to the 7-bit and line length requirements, but might in fact be binary files. Thus a Content-Transfer-Encoding is not generally necessary, though it is permitted.
Note that the body of a message of type "message/external-body" is governed by the basic syntax for an RFC 822 message. In particular, anything before the first consecutive pair of CRLFs is header information, while anything after it is body information, which is ignored for most access-types.
The formal grammar for content-type header fields for data of type message is given by:
message-type := "message" "/" message-subtype
message-subtype := "rfc822"
/ "partial" 2#3partial-param
/ "external-body" 1*external-param
/ extension-token
partial-param := (";" "id" "=" value)
/ (";" "number" "=" 1*DIGIT)
/ (";" "total" "=" 1*DIGIT)
; id & number required; total required for last part
external-param := (";" "access-type" "=" atype)
/ (";" "expiration" "=" date-time)
; Note that date-time is quoted
/ (";" "size" "=" 1*DIGIT)
/ (";" "permission" "=" ("read" / "read-write"))
; Permission is case-insensitive
/ (";" "name" "=" value)
/ (";" "site" "=" value)
/ (";" "dir" "=" value)
/ (";" "mode" "=" value)
/ (";" "server" "=" value)
/ (";" "subject" "=" value)
; access-type required;others required based on access-type
atype := "ftp" / "anon-ftp" / "tftp" / "local-file"
/ "afs" / "mail-server" / extension-token
; Case-insensitive
For example, a meeting scheduler might define a standard representation for information about proposed meeting dates. An intelligent user agent would use this information to conduct a dialog with the user, and might then send further mail based on that dialog. More generally, there have been several "active" messaging languages developed in which programs in a suitably specialized language are sent through the mail and automatically run in the recipient's environment.
Such applications may be defined as subtypes of the "application" Content-Type. This document defines two subtypes: octet-stream, and PostScript.
In general, the subtype of application will often be the name of the application for which the data are intended. This does not mean, however, that any application program name may be used freely as a subtype of application. Such usages (other than subtypes beginning with "x-") must be registered with IANA, as described in Appendix E.
An additional parameter, "conversions", was defined in [RFC-1341] but has been removed.
RFC 1341 also defined the use of a "NAME" parameter which gave a suggested file name to be used if the data were to be written to a file. This has been deprecated in anticipation of a separate Content-Disposition header field, to be defined in a subsequent RFC.
The recommended action for an implementation that receives application/octet-stream mail is to simply offer to put the data in a file, with any Content-Transfer-Encoding undone, or perhaps to use it as input to a user-specified process.
To reduce the danger of transmitting rogue programs through the mail, it is strongly recommended that implementations NOT implement a path-search mechanism whereby an arbitrary program named in the Content-Type parameter (e.g., an "interpreter=" parameter) is found and executed using the mail body as input.
PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. Use of the MIME content-type "application/postscript" implies recognition of that trademark and all the rights it entails.
The PostScript language definition provides facilities for internal labeling of the specific language features a given program uses. This labeling, called the PostScript document structuring conventions, is very general and provides substantially more information than just the language level.
The use of document structuring conventions, while not required, is strongly recommended as an aid to interoperability. Documents which lack proper structuring conventions cannot be tested to see whether or not they will work in a given environment. As such, some systems may assume the worst and refuse to process unstructured documents.
The execution of general-purpose PostScript interpreters entails serious security risks, and implementors are discouraged from simply sending PostScript email bodies to "off-the-shelf" interpreters. While it is usually safe to send PostScript to a printer, where the potential for harm is greatly constrained, implementors should consider all of the following before they add interactive display of PostScript bodies to their mail readers.
The remainder of this section outlines some, though probably not all, of the possible problems with sending PostScript through the mail.
Dangerous operations in the PostScript language include, but may not be limited to, the PostScript operators deletefile, renamefile, filenameforall, and file. File is only dangerous when applied to something other than standard input or output. Implementations may also define additional nonstandard file operators; these may also pose a threat to security. Filenameforall, the wildcard file search operator, may appear at first glance to be harmless. Note, however, that this operator has the potential to reveal information about what files the recipient has access to, and this information may itself be sensitive. Message senders should avoid the use of potentially dangerous file operators, since these operators are quite likely to be unavailable in secure PostScript implementations. Message-receiving and -displaying software should either completely disable all potentially dangerous file operators or take special care not to delegate any special authority to their operation. These operators should be viewed as being done by an outside agency when interpreting PostScript documents. Such disabling and/or checking should be done completely outside of the reach of the PostScript language itself; care should be taken to insure that no method exists for re-enabling full-function versions of these operators.
The PostScript language provides facilities for exiting the normal interpreter, or server, loop. Changes made in this "outer" environment are customarily retained across documents, and may in some cases be retained semipermanently in nonvolatile memory. The operators associated with exiting the interpreter loop have the potential to interfere with subsequent document processing. As such, their unrestrained use constitutes a threat of service denial. PostScript operators that exit the interpreter loop include, but may not be limited to, the exitserver and startjob operators. Message-sending software should not generate PostScript that depends on exiting the interpreter loop to operate. The ability to exit will probably be unavailable in secure PostScript implementations. Message-receiving and -displaying software should, if possible, disable the ability to make retained changes to the PostScript environment, and eliminate the startjob and exitserver commands. If these commands cannot be eliminated, the password associated with them should at least be set to a hard-to-guess value.
PostScript provides operators for setting system-wide and device-specific parameters. These parameter settings may be retained across jobs and may potentially pose a threat to the correct operation of the interpreter. The PostScript operators that set system and device parameters include, but may not be limited to, the setsystemparams and setdevparams operators. Message-sending software should not generate PostScript that depends on the setting of system or device parameters to operate correctly. The ability to set these parameters will probably be unavailable in secure PostScript implementations. Message-receiving and -displaying software should, if possible, disable the ability to change system and device parameters. If these operators cannot be disabled, the password associated with them should at least be set to a hard-to-guess value.
Some PostScript implementations provide nonstandard facilities for the direct loading and execution of machine code. Such facilities are quite obviously open to substantial abuse. Message-sending software should not make use of such features. Besides being totally hardware- specific, they are also likely to be unavailable in secure implementations of PostScript. Message-receiving and -displaying software should not allow such operators to be used if they exist.
PostScript is an extensible language, and many, if not most, implementations of it provide a number of their own extensions. This document does not deal with such extensions explicitly since they constitute an unknown factor. Message-sending software should not make use of nonstandard extensions; they are likely to be missing from some implementations. Message-receiving and -displaying software should make sure that any nonstandard PostScript operators are secure and don't present any kind of threat.
It is possible to write PostScript that consumes huge amounts of various system resources. It is also possible to write PostScript programs that loop infinitely. Both types of programs have the potential to cause damage if sent to unsuspecting recipients. Message-sending software should avoid the construction and dissemination of such programs, which is antisocial. Message-receiving and -displaying software should provide appropriate mechanisms to abort processing of a document after a reasonable amount of time has elapsed. In addition, PostScript interpreters should be limited to the consumption of only a reasonable amount of any given system resource.
Finally, bugs may exist in some PostScript interpreters which could possibly be exploited to gain unauthorized access to a recipient's system. Apart from noting this possibility, there is no specific action to take to prevent this, apart from the timely correction of such bugs if any are found.
The formal grammar for content-type header fields for application data is given by:
application-type := "application" "/" application-subtype
application-subtype := ("octet-stream" *stream-param)
/ "postscript" / extension-token
stream-param := (";" "type" "=" value)
/ (";" "padding" "=" padding)
padding := "0" / "1" / "2" / "3" / "4" / "5" / "6" / "7"
The list of image subtypes given here is neither exclusive nor exhaustive, and is expected to grow as more types are registered with IANA, as described in Appendix E.
The formal grammar for the content-type header field for data of type image is given by:
image-type := "image" "/" ("gif" / "jpeg" / extension-token)
The initial subtype of "basic" is specified to meet this requirement by providing an absolutely minimal lowest common denominator audio format. It is expected that richer formats for higher quality and/or lower bandwidth audio will be defined by a later document.
The content of the "audio/basic" subtype is audio encoded using 8-bit ISDN mu-law [PCM]. When this subtype is present, a sample rate of 8000 Hz and a single channel is assumed.
The formal grammar for the content-type header field for data of type audio is given by:
audio-type := "audio" "/" ("basic" / extension-token)
Note that although in general this document strongly discourages the mixing of multiple media in a single body, it is recognized that many so-called "video" formats include a representation for synchronized audio, and this is explicitly permitted for subtypes of "video".
The formal grammar for the content-type header field for data of type video is given by:
video-type := "video" "/" ("mpeg" / extension-token)
In general, the use of "X-" top-level types is strongly discouraged. Implementors should invent subtypes of the existing types whenever possible. The invention of new types is intended to be restricted primarily to the development of new media types for email, such as digital odors or holography, and not for new data formats in general. In many cases, a subtype of application will be more appropriate than a new top-level type.
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