RFC 1342 has been revised; the current encoded-word spec is RFC 1522.
The relevant text from 1522 is:
] 6.2. Display of encoded-words
]
] Any encoded-words so recognized are decoded, and if possible, the
] resulting unencoded text is displayed in the original character set.
]
] When displaying a particular header field that contains multiple
] encoded-words, any linear-white-space that separates a pair of
] adjacent encoded-words is ignored. (This is to allow the use of
] multiple encoded-words to represent long strings of unencoded text,
] without having to separate encoded-words where spaces occur in the
] unencoded text.)
Note that "linear-white-space" is defined in RFC 822 as:
] LWSP-char = SPACE / HTAB ; semantics = SPACE
]
] linear-white-space = 1*([CRLF] LWSP-char) ; semantics = SPACE
] ; CRLF => folding
So to compare the two:
1342 says to ignore a single SPACE following an encoded word.
1522 says to ignore any linear-white-space separating a pair
of encoded-words.
Keith Moore