MIME was in significant use quite a bit before ESMTP was operational. In fact
it's a non-trivial feature that MIME only requires adoption by author and
recipient and not by /any/ of the infrastructure. IE, not by SMTP.
Yes, I know, but I wish you'd read what I've said about 8BITMIME. It's
an overlay that makes an INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE TO THE MESSAGE FORMAT, which
is a version change in any world I know.
Ditto EAI.
The SMTP extensions to support MIME characteristics are value-added, beyond
the basic MIME capability. In other words, they aren't necessary.
Well, sure, neither is DKIM, you could authenticate your mail some other
way. I don't understand what point you're making here.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)iecc(_dot_)com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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