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Network Working Group N. Freed Request for Comments: 2046 Innosoft Obsoletes: 1521, 1522, 1590 N. Borenstein Category: Standards Track First Virtual November 1996 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types Status of this Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract STD 11, RFC 822 defines a message representation protocol specifying considerable detail about US-ASCII message headers, but which leaves the message content, or message body, as flat US-ASCII text. This set of documents, collectively called the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, or MIME, redefines the format of messages to allow for (1) textual message bodies in character sets other than US-ASCII, (2) an extensible set of different formats for non-textual message bodies, (3) multi-part message bodies, and (4) textual header information in character sets other than US-ASCII. These documents are based on earlier work documented in RFC 934, STD 11, and RFC 1049, but extends and revises them. Because RFC 822 said so little about message bodies, these documents are largely orthogonal to (rather than a revision of) RFC 822. The initial document in this set, RFC 2045, specifies the various headers used to describe the structure of MIME messages. This second document defines the general structure of the MIME media typing system and defines an initial set of media types. The third document, RFC 2047, describes extensions to RFC 822 to allow non-US-ASCII text Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 data in Internet mail header fields. The fourth document, RFC 2048, specifies various IANA registration procedures for MIME-related facilities. The fifth and final document, RFC 2049, describes MIME conformance criteria as well as providing some illustrative examples of MIME message formats, acknowledgements, and the bibliography. These documents are revisions of RFCs 1521 and 1522, which themselves were revisions of RFCs 1341 and 1342. An appendix in RFC 2049 describes differences and changes from previous versions. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ......................................... 3 2. Definition of a Top-Level Media Type ................. 4 3. Overview Of The Initial Top-Level Media Types ........ 4 4. Discrete Media Type Values ........................... 6 4.1 Text Media Type ..................................... 6 4.1.1 Representation of Line Breaks ..................... 7 4.1.2 Charset Parameter ................................. 7 4.1.3 Plain Subtype ..................................... 11 4.1.4 Unrecognized Subtypes ............................. 11 4.2 Image Media Type .................................... 11 4.3 Audio Media Type .................................... 11 4.4 Video Media Type .................................... 12 4.5 Application Media Type .............................. 12 4.5.1 Octet-Stream Subtype .............................. 13 4.5.2 PostScript Subtype ................................ 14 4.5.3 Other Application Subtypes ........................ 17 5. Composite Media Type Values .......................... 17 5.1 Multipart Media Type ................................ 17 5.1.1 Common Syntax ..................................... 19 5.1.2 Handling Nested Messages and Multiparts ........... 24 5.1.3 Mixed Subtype ..................................... 24 5.1.4 Alternative Subtype ............................... 24 5.1.5 Digest Subtype .................................... 26 5.1.6 Parallel Subtype .................................. 27 5.1.7 Other Multipart Subtypes .......................... 28 5.2 Message Media Type .................................. 28 5.2.1 RFC822 Subtype .................................... 28 5.2.2 Partial Subtype ................................... 29 5.2.2.1 Message Fragmentation and Reassembly ............ 30 5.2.2.2 Fragmentation and Reassembly Example ............ 31 5.2.3 External-Body Subtype ............................. 33 5.2.4 Other Message Subtypes ............................ 40 6. Experimental Media Type Values ....................... 40 7. Summary .............................................. 41 8. Security Considerations .............................. 41 9. Authors' Addresses ................................... 42 Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 A. Collected Grammar .................................... 43 1. Introduction The first document in this set, RFC 2045, defines a number of header fields, including Content-Type. The Content-Type field is used to specify the nature of the data in the body of a MIME entity, by giving media type and subtype identifiers, and by providing auxiliary information that may be required for certain media types. After the type and subtype names, the remainder of the header field is simply a set of parameters, specified in an attribute/value notation. The ordering of parameters is not significant. In general, the top-level media type is used to declare the general type of data, while the subtype specifies a specific format for that type of data. Thus, a media type of "image/xyz" is enough to tell a user agent that the data is an image, even if the user agent has no knowledge of the specific image format "xyz". Such information can be used, for example, to decide whether or not to show a user the raw data from an unrecognized subtype -- such an action might be reasonable for unrecognized subtypes of "text", but not for unrecognized subtypes of "image" or "audio". For this reason, registered subtypes of "text", "image", "audio", and "video" should not contain embedded information that is really of a different type. Such compound formats should be represented using the "multipart" or "application" types. Parameters are modifiers of the media subtype, and as such do not fundamentally affect the nature of the content. The set of meaningful parameters depends on the media type and subtype. Most parameters are associated with a single specific subtype. However, a given top-level media type may define parameters which are applicable to any subtype of that type. Parameters may be required by their defining media type or subtype or they may be optional. MIME implementations must also ignore any parameters whose names they do not recognize. MIME's Content-Type header field and media type mechanism has been carefully designed to be extensible, and it is expected that the set of media type/subtype pairs and their associated parameters will grow significantly over time. Several other MIME facilities, such as transfer encodings and "message/external-body" access types, are likely to have new values defined over time. In order to ensure that the set of such values is developed in an orderly, well-specified, and public manner, MIME sets up a registration process which uses the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as a central registry for MIME's various areas of extensibility. The registration process for these areas is described in a companion document, RFC 2048. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 3] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 The initial seven standard top-level media type are defined and described in the remainder of this document. 2. Definition of a Top-Level Media Type The definition of a top-level media type consists of: (1) a name and a description of the type, including criteria for whether a particular type would qualify under that type, (2) the names and definitions of parameters, if any, which are defined for all subtypes of that type (including whether such parameters are required or optional), (3) how a user agent and/or gateway should handle unknown subtypes of this type, (4) general considerations on gatewaying entities of this top-level type, if any, and (5) any restrictions on content-transfer-encodings for entities of this top-level type. 3. Overview Of The Initial Top-Level Media Types The five discrete top-level media types are: (1) text -- textual information. The subtype "plain" in particular indicates plain text containing no formatting commands or directives of any sort. Plain text is intended to be displayed "as-is". No special software is required to get the full meaning of the text, aside from support for the indicated character set. Other subtypes are to be used for enriched text in forms where application software may enhance the appearance of the text, but such software must not be required in order to get the general idea of the content. Possible subtypes of "text" thus include any word processor format that can be read without resorting to software that understands the format. In particular, formats that employ embeddded binary formatting information are not considered directly readable. A very simple and portable subtype, "richtext", was defined in RFC 1341, with a further revision in RFC 1896 under the name "enriched". Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 4] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 (2) image -- image data. "Image" requires a display device (such as a graphical display, a graphics printer, or a FAX machine) to view the information. An initial subtype is defined for the widely-used image format JPEG. . subtypes are defined for two widely-used image formats, jpeg and gif. (3) audio -- audio data. "Audio" requires an audio output device (such as a speaker or a telephone) to "display" the contents. An initial subtype "basic" is defined in this document. (4) video -- video data. "Video" requires the capability to display moving images, typically including specialized hardware and software. An initial subtype "mpeg" is defined in this document. (5) application -- some other kind of data, typically either uninterpreted binary data or information to be processed by an application. The subtype "octet- stream" is to be used in the case of uninterpreted binary data, in which case the simplest recommended action is to offer to write the information into a file for the user. The "PostScript" subtype is also defined for the transport of PostScript material. Other expected uses for "application" include spreadsheets, data for mail-based scheduling systems, and languages for "active" (computational) messaging, and word processing formats that are not directly readable. Note that security considerations may exist for some types of application data, most notably "application/PostScript" and any form of active messaging. These issues are discussed later in this document. The two composite top-level media types are: (1) multipart -- data consisting of multiple entities of independent data types. Four subtypes are initially defined, including the basic "mixed" subtype specifying a generic mixed set of parts, "alternative" for representing the same data in multiple formats, "parallel" for parts intended to be viewed simultaneously, and "digest" for multipart entities in which each part has a default type of "message/rfc822". Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 5] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 (2) message -- an encapsulated message. A body of media type "message" is itself all or a portion of some kind of message object. Such objects may or may not in turn contain other entities. The "rfc822" subtype is used when the encapsulated content is itself an RFC 822 message. The "partial" subtype is defined for partial RFC 822 messages, to permit the fragmented transmission of bodies that are thought to be too large to be passed through transport facilities in one piece. Another subtype, "external-body", is defined for specifying large bodies by reference to an external data source. It should be noted that the list of media type values given here may be augmented in time, via the mechanisms described above, and that the set of subtypes is expected to grow substantially. 4. Discrete Media Type Values Five of the seven initial media type values refer to discrete bodies. The content of these types must be handled by non-MIME mechanisms; they are opaque to MIME processors. 4.1. Text Media Type The "text" media type is intended for sending material which is principally textual in form. A "charset" parameter may be used to indicate the character set of the body text for "text" subtypes, notably including the subtype "text/plain", which is a generic subtype for plain text. Plain text does not provide for or allow formatting commands, font attribute specifications, processing instructions, interpretation directives, or content markup. Plain text is seen simply as a linear sequence of characters, possibly interrupted by line breaks or page breaks. Plain text may allow the stacking of several characters in the same position in the text. Plain text in scripts like Arabic and Hebrew may also include facilitites that allow the arbitrary mixing of text segments with opposite writing directions. Beyond plain text, there are many formats for representing what might be known as "rich text". 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". Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 6] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 4.1.1. Representation of Line Breaks The canonical form of any MIME "text" subtype MUST always represent a line break as a CRLF sequence. Similarly, any occurrence of CRLF in MIME "text" MUST represent a line break. Use of CR and LF outside of line break sequences is also forbidden. This rule applies regardless of format or character set or sets involved. NOTE: The proper interpretation of line breaks when a body is displayed depends on the media type. In particular, while it is appropriate to treat a line break as a transition to a new line when displaying a "text/plain" body, this treatment is actually incorrect for other subtypes of "text" like "text/enriched" [RFC-1896]. Similarly, whether or not line breaks should be added during display operations is also a function of the media type. It should not be necessary to add any line breaks to display "text/plain" correctly, whereas proper display of "text/enriched" requires the appropriate addition of line breaks. NOTE: Some protocols defines a maximum line length. E.g. SMTP [RFC- 821] allows a maximum of 998 octets before the next CRLF sequence. To be transported by such protocols, data which includes too long segments without CRLF sequences must be encoded with a suitable content-transfer-encoding. 4.1.2. Charset Parameter A critical parameter that may be specified in the Content-Type field for "text/plain" data is the character set. This is specified with a "charset" parameter, as in: Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 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. For other subtypes of "text" than "text/plain", the semantics of the "charset" parameter should be defined to 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 to the implications of multioctet character sets for their subtype definitions. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 7] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 The charset parameter for subtypes of "text" gives a name of a character set, as "character set" is defined in RFC 2045. The rules regarding line breaks detailed in the previous section must also be observed -- a character set whose definition does not conform to these rules cannot be used in a MIME "text" subtype. 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. Other media types than subtypes of "text" might choose to employ the charset parameter as defined here, but with the CRLF/line break restriction removed. Therefore, all character sets that conform to the general definition of "character set" in RFC 2045 can be registered for MIME use. Note that if the specified character set includes 8-bit characters and such characters are used in the body, 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 [RFC-821]. 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 as a media type parameter in the Content-Type header field. "US-ASCII" does not indicate an arbitrary 7-bit character set, but specifies that all octets in the body must be interpreted as characters according to the US-ASCII character set. National and application-oriented versions of ISO 646 [ISO-646] are usually NOT identical to US-ASCII, and in that case their use in Internet mail is explicitly discouraged. The omission of the ISO 646 character set from this document is deliberate in this regard. The character set name of "US-ASCII" explicitly refers to the character set defined in ANSI X3.4-1986 [US- ASCII]. The new international reference version (IRV) of the 1991 edition of ISO 646 is identical to US-ASCII. The character set name "ASCII" is reserved and must not be used for any purpose. NOTE: RFC 821 explicitly specifies "ASCII", and references an earlier version of the American Standard. Insofar as one of the purposes of specifying a media type and character set is to permit the receiver to unambiguously determine how the sender intended the coded message to be interpreted, assuming anything other than "strict ASCII" as the default would risk unintentional and incompatible changes to the semantics of messages now being transmitted. This also implies that Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 8] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 messages containing characters coded according to other versions of ISO 646 than US-ASCII and the 1991 IRV, or using code-switching procedures (e.g., those of ISO 2022), as well as 8bit or multiple octet character encodings MUST use an appropriate character set specification to be consistent with MIME. The complete US-ASCII character set is listed in ANSI X3.4- 1986. Note that the control characters including DEL (0-31, 127) have no defined meaning in apart from the combination CRLF (US-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)." Aside from these conventions, any use of the control characters or DEL in a body must either occur (1) because a subtype of text other than "plain" specifically assigns some additional meaning, or (2) within the context 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. NOTE: An enormous proliferation of character sets exist beyond US- ASCII. A large number of partially or totally overlapping character sets is NOT a good thing. A SINGLE character set that can be used universally for representing all of the world's languages in Internet mail would be preferrable. Unfortunately, existing practice in several communities seems to point to the continued use of multiple character sets in the near future. A small number of standard character sets are, therefore, defined for Internet use in this document. The defined charset values are: (1) US-ASCII -- as defined in ANSI X3.4-1986 [US-ASCII]. (2) ISO-8859-X -- where "X" is to be replaced, as necessary, for the parts of ISO-8859 [ISO-8859]. Note that the ISO 646 character sets have deliberately been omitted in favor of their 8859 replacements, which are the designated character sets for Internet mail. As of the publication of this document, the legitimate values for "X" are the digits 1 through 10. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 9] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 Characters in the range 128-159 has no assigned meaning in ISO-8859- X. Characters with values below 128 in ISO-8859-X have the same assigned meaning as they do in US-ASCII. Part 6 of ISO 8859 (Latin/Arabic alphabet) and part 8 (Latin/Hebrew alphabet) includes both characters for which the normal writing direction is right to left and characters for which it is left to right, but do not define a canonical ordering method for representing bi-directional text. The charset values "ISO-8859-6" and "ISO-8859- 8", however, specify that the visual method is used [RFC-1556]. All of these character sets are used as pure 7bit or 8bit sets without any shift or escape functions. The meaning of shift and escape sequences in these character sets is not defined. 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. Note that the character set used, if anything other than US- ASCII, must always be explicitly specified in the Content-Type field. No character set name other than those defined above 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 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, composition software should always use the "lowest common denominator" character set possible. For example, if a body contains only US-ASCII characters, it SHOULD 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 should be labelled as being in that subset. This will increase the chances that the recipient will be able to view the resulting entity correctly. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 10] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 4.1.3. Plain Subtype The simplest and most important subtype of "text" is "plain". This indicates plain text that does not contain any formatting commands or directives. Plain text is intended to be displayed "as-is", that is, no interpretation of embedded formatting commands, font attribute specifications, processing instructions, interpretation directives, or content markup should be necessary for proper display. The default media type of "text/plain; charset=us-ascii" for Internet mail describes existing Internet practice. That is, it is the type of body defined by RFC 822. No other "text" subtype is defined by this document. 4.1.4. Unrecognized Subtypes Unrecognized subtypes of "text" should be treated as subtype "plain" as long as the MIME implementation knows how to handle the charset. Unrecognized subtypes which also specify an unrecognized charset should be treated as "application/octet- stream". 4.2. Image Media Type A media type of "image" indicates that the body contains an image. The subtype names the specific image format. These names are not case sensitive. An initial subtype is "jpeg" for the JPEG format using JFIF encoding [JPEG]. 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 RFC 2048. Unrecognized subtypes of "image" should at a miniumum be treated as "application/octet-stream". Implementations may optionally elect to pass subtypes of "image" that they do not specifically recognize to a secure and robust general-purpose image viewing application, if such an application is available. NOTE: Using of a generic-purpose image viewing application this way inherits the security problems of the most dangerous type supported by the application. 4.3. Audio Media Type A media type of "audio" indicates that the body contains audio data. Although there is not yet a consensus on an "ideal" audio format for use with computers, there is a pressing need for a format capable of providing interoperable behavior. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 11] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 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 single channel audio encoded using 8bit ISDN mu-law [PCM] at a sample rate of 8000 Hz. Unrecognized subtypes of "audio" should at a miniumum be treated as "application/octet-stream". Implementations may optionally elect to pass subtypes of "audio" that they do not specifically recognize to a robust general-purpose audio playing application, if such an application is available. 4.4. Video Media Type A media type of "video" indicates that the body contains a time- varying-picture image, possibly with color and coordinated sound. The term 'video' is used in its most generic sense, rather than with reference to any particular technology or format, and is not meant to preclude subtypes such as animated drawings encoded compactly. The subtype "mpeg" refers to video coded according to the MPEG standard [MPEG]. 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". Unrecognized subtypes of "video" should at a minumum be treated as "application/octet-stream". Implementations may optionally elect to pass subtypes of "video" that they do not specifically recognize to a robust general-purpose video display application, if such an application is available. 4.5. Application Media Type The "application" media type is to be used for discrete data which do not fit in any of the other categories, and particularly for data to be processed by some type of application program. This is information which must be processed by an application before it is viewable or usable by a user. Expected uses for the "application" media type include file transfer, spreadsheets, data for mail-based scheduling systems, and languages for "active" (computational) material. (The latter, in particular, can pose security problems which must be understood by implementors, and are considered in detail in the discussion of the "application/PostScript" media type.) Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 12] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 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 additional material based on that dialog. More generally, there have been several "active" messaging languages developed in which programs in a suitably specialized language are transported to a remote location and automatically run in the recipient's environment. Such applications may be defined as subtypes of the "application" media type. This document defines two subtypes: octet-stream, and PostScript. The subtype of "application" will often be either the name or include part of 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". 4.5.1. Octet-Stream Subtype The "octet-stream" subtype is used to indicate that a body contains arbitrary binary data. The set of currently defined parameters is: (1) TYPE -- the general type or category of binary data. This is intended as information for the human recipient rather than for any automatic processing. (2) PADDING -- the number of bits of padding that were appended to the bit-stream comprising the actual contents to produce the enclosed 8bit byte-oriented data. This is useful for enclosing a bit-stream in a body when the total number of bits is not a multiple of 8. Both of these parameters are optional. An additional parameter, "CONVERSIONS", was defined in RFC 1341 but has since 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 an "application/octet-stream" entity 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. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 13] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 To reduce the danger of transmitting rogue programs, 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 message body as input. 4.5.2. PostScript Subtype A media type of "application/postscript" indicates a PostScript program. Currently two variants of the PostScript language are allowed; the original level 1 variant is described in [POSTSCRIPT] and the more recent level 2 variant is described in [POSTSCRIPT2]. PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. Use of the MIME media type "application/postscript" implies recognition of that trademark and all the rights it entails. The PostScript language definition provides facilities for internal labelling of the specific language features a given program uses. This labelling, called the PostScript document structuring conventions, or DSC, 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 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 by typical printer environments, implementors should consider all of the following before they add interactive display of PostScript bodies to their MIME readers. The remainder of this section outlines some, though probably not all, of the possible problems with the transport of PostScript entities. (1) 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. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 14] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 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. (2) 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, since the ability to exit will probably be unavailable in secure PostScript implementations. Message receiving and displaying software should completely disable the ability to make retained changes to the PostScript environment by eliminating or disabling the "startjob" and "exitserver" operations. If these operations cannot be eliminated or completely disabled the password associated with them should at least be set to a hard- to-guess value. (3) 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 Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 15] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 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 disable the ability to change system and device parameters. If these operators cannot be completely disabled the password associated with them should at least be set to a hard-to-guess value. (4) 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. (5) 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. (6) It is possible to write PostScript that consumes huge amounts of various system resources. It is also possible to write PostScript programs that loop indefinitely. 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 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. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 16] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 (7) It is possible to include raw binary information inside PostScript in various forms. This is not recommended for use in Internet mail, both because it is not supported by all PostScript interpreters and because it significantly complicates the use of a MIME Content- Transfer-Encoding. (Without such binary, PostScript may typically be viewed as line-oriented data. The treatment of CRLF sequences becomes extremely problematic if binary and line-oriented data are mixed in a single Postscript data stream.) (8) 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. 4.5.3. Other Application Subtypes It is expected that many other subtypes of "application" will be defined in the future. MIME implementations must at a minimum treat any unrecognized subtypes as being equivalent to "application/octet- stream". 5. Composite Media Type Values The remaining two of the seven initial Content-Type values refer to composite entities. Composite entities are handled using MIME mechanisms -- a MIME processor typically handles the body directly. 5.1. Multipart Media Type In the case of multipart entities, in which one or more different sets of data are combined in a single body, a "multipart" media type field must appear in the entity's header. The body must then contain one or more body parts, each preceded by a boundary delimiter line, and the last one followed by a closing boundary delimiter line. After its boundary delimiter line, each body part then consists of a header area, a blank line, and a body area. Thus a body part is similar to an RFC 822 message in syntax, but different in meaning. A body part is an entity and hence 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 usually indicates that the corresponding body has Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 17] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 a content-type of "text/plain; charset=US-ASCII". The only header fields that have defined meaning for body parts are those the names of which begin with "Content-". All other header fields may be ignored in body parts. Although they should generally be retained if at all possible, 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. NOTE: The distinction between an RFC 822 message and a body part is subtle, but important. A gateway between Internet and X.400 mail, for example, must be able to tell the difference between a body part that contains an image and a body part that contains an encapsulated message, the body of which is a JPEG image. In order to represent the latter, the body part must have "Content-Type: message/rfc822", and its body (after the blank line) must be the encapsulated message, with its own "Content-Type: image/jpeg" header field. The use of similar syntax facilitates the conversion of messages to body parts, and vice versa, but the distinction between the two must be understood by implementors. (For the special case in which parts actually are messages, a "digest" subtype is also defined.) As stated previously, each body part is preceded by a boundary delimiter line that contains the boundary delimiter. The boundary delimiter MUST NOT appear inside any of the encapsulated parts, on a line by itself or as the prefix of any line. This implies that it is crucial that the composing agent be able to choose and specify a unique boundary parameter value that does not contain the boundary parameter value of an enclosing multipart as a prefix. 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 those of an unrecognized subtype. As stated in the definition of the Content-Transfer-Encoding field [RFC 2045], no encoding other than "7bit", "8bit", or "binary" is permitted for entities of type "multipart". The "multipart" boundary delimiters and header fields are always represented as 7bit US-ASCII in any case (though the header fields may encode non-US-ASCII header text as per RFC 2047) 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. Freed & Borenstein Standards Track [Page 18] RFC 2046 Media Types November 1996 5.1.1. Common Syntax This section defines a common syntax for subtypes of "multipart". All subtypes of "multipart" must use this syntax. A simple example of a multipart message also appears in this section. An example of a more complex multipart message is given in RFC 2049. The Content-Type field for multipart entities requires one parameter, "boundary". The boundary delimiter line is then defined as a line consisting entirely of two hyphen characters ("-", decimal value 45) followed by the boundary parameter value from the Content-Type header field, optional linear whitespace, and a terminating CRLF. NOTE: The hyphens are for rough compatibility with the earlier RFC 934 method of message encapsulation, and for ease of searching for the boundaries in some implementations. However, it should be noted that multipart messages are NOT completely compatible with RFC 934 encapsulations; in particular, they do not obey RFC 934 quoting conventions for embedded lines that begin with hyphens. This mechanism was chosen over the RFC 934 mechanism because the latter causes lines to grow with each level of quoting. The combination of this growth with the fact that SMTP implementations sometimes wrap long lines made the RFC 934 mechanism unsuitable for use in the event that deeply-nested multipart structuring is ever desired. WARNING TO IMPLEMENTORS: The grammar for parameters on the Content- type field is such that it is often necessa