Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 15-Dec-92 Re: quoted-binary: an idea ..
John C Klensin(_at_)infoods(_dot_)m (1608*)
-- It is going to be very difficult to write a coherent explanation of
how to handle quoted 8bit in MIME without reference to some Internet-
legitimate way of transporting it, i.e., without reference to the SMTP
Extensions "service extensions" and "8bit MIME transport" docs.
Well, I'm not sure that this is the case. To the extent that the
current MIME doc succeeds in explaining what the c-t-e of "binary"
means, I think that "quoted-8bit" can be made equally clear. You define
it in terms of a hypothetical transport layer that permits 8-bit
characters but is still line-length oriented. You don't need to make
specific reference to the SMTP extensions at all.
I agree that we shouldn't put this is in the main MIME document if it
causes it to be reset to Proposed Standard, but I really don't think
that this should be the case. -- NB