Re: non-US-ASCII characters in mail headers

From: JF Mezei (jfmezei.spamnot_at_teksavvy.com)
Date: 03/31/05 

Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 05:06:09 -0500

Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote:
> The reason I ask is that yesterday, for the first time ever, I got an
> error message from a mail server because the Subject: header of a mail
> message I sent had such a character in it. Is this in violation of any
> RFC, i.e. was the mail server correct in rejecting it?

Yes and no. There are 8 bit exxtesions to RFC822 which allow raw 8 bit
characters. Many SMTP serves automatically translate messages to quoted
printable when they see any caractedr greater than 127 which is what was
required prior to the 8 bit extensions becoming "legal".

Strictly speaking, you are not RFC822 complaint when you send raw 8 bit
characters. But you are compliant with other RFCs which superceded RFC822.

TCPIP services on VMS seem to simply chop the high bit of charcaters
when you tell you don't have any 8bit clean channel. (As oppposed to
encoding charcaters). But I haven,t tested this in a long while though.

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