> Do you (or anybody else reading this) have any statistics about the
> lengths of 'encoded-words' that are actually encountered in the wild?
Well, it's a pathological case that one does not have to encode a
types overlong MIME wird, because it isn't one due to its length.
See section 6.1, though:
(1) Any message or body part header field defined as '*text', or any
user-defined header field, should be parsed as follows: Beginning
at the start of the field-body and immediately following each
occurrence of 'linear-white-space', each sequence of up to 75
printable characters (not containing any 'linear-white-space')
should be examined to see if it is an 'encoded-word' according to
the syntax rules in section 2. Any other sequence of printable
characters should be treated as ordinary ASCII text.
^^^^^^
Ok, but it is a recommendation to do things as I said concerning the
length, because 75-char prefixes of overlong MIME words aren't correct
MIME words.
> However, nowhere in the RFC does it say "Don't recognize an
> encoded word if the text is invalid for the encoding", as far as I can
> see.
(3) Within a 'comment', any sequence of up to 75 printable characters
(not containing 'linear-white-space'), that meets the syntax
rules in section 2, should be treated as an 'encoded-word'.
Otherwise it should be treated as normal comment text.
So, if it does not meet the syntax, it is to be treated literally.
Most, but not all, MUAs actually work that way.
Can you tell I have had this discussion a couple times in the past
already? ;-)
Michael
