Re: Updating RFC 2368 (mailto: URI)

At 5:59 PM -0500 2/15/03, Martin Duerst wrote:
>We should think about how this is affected by IMAs.
>In particular, with IRIs,

We should think about this eventually, but it is premature to do so 
now. The IRI spec has not gone through IETF last call.

>While we are it, some more comments on RFC 2368 and internationalization.
>Here is some text that I found:
>
>    8-bit characters in mailto URLs are forbidden. MIME encoded words (as
>    defined in [RFC2047]) are permitted in header values, but not for any
>    part of a "body" hname.
>
>This is not completely clear. Is it forbidden to use 8-bit octets
>in mailto URIs in raw form?

Yes.

>The general URI spec would definitely
>forbid this, so this would just be a repetition.

Yes. It was added for emphasis.

>Or is it forbidden to include such octets %-escaped? In that case,
>it would be impossible e.g. to create a mailto: URI that sends a
>PNG image to somebody (for example, not that that's frequently done).

It is impossible to do that anyhow. RFC explicitly 2368 forbids MIME 
body parts.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium