RFC - 2048

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures

Original:	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2048.txt
Authors:	N. Freed [Innosoft], J. Klensin [MCI], J. Postel [ISI]
Date:	November 1996
Category:	Informational
This specification has been !!! obsoleted !!!

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Obsoleted by:
RFC-4289	Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures
RFC-4288 [BCP 13]	Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures

Obsoletes:
RFC-1590	Media Type Registration Procedure (Obsoleted by RFC-2048 -> RFC-4288; -> RFC-4289, RFC-2049draft, RFC-2047draft, RFC-2045draft, RFC-2046draft)
RFC-1522	MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part Two: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text (Obsoleted by RFC-2048 -> RFC-4288; -> RFC-4289, RFC-2049draft, RFC-2047draft, RFC-2045draft, RFC-2046draft)
RFC-1521	MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies (Obsoleted by RFC-2048 -> RFC-4288; -> RFC-4289, RFC-2049draft, RFC-2047draft, RFC-2045draft, RFC-2046draft) (Updated by RFC-1590)

Updated by:
RFC-3023prop	XML Media Types

Referred by:	85 RFC
Refers to:	5 RFC

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Status

This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

STD 11, RFC 822^std11(-> 2822^prop), defines a message representation protocol specifying considerable detail about US-ASCII message headers, and leaves the message content, or message body, as flat US-ASCII text. This set of documents, collectively called the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, or MIME, redefines the format of messages to allow for

1. textual message bodies in character sets other than US-ASCII,
2. an extensible set of different formats for non-textual message bodies,
3. multi-part message bodies, and
4. textual header information in character sets other than US-ASCII.

These documents are based on earlier work documented in RFC 934, STD 11, and RFC 1049^hist, but extends and revises them. Because RFC 822^std11(-> 2822^prop) said so little about message bodies, these documents are largely orthogonal to (rather than a revision of) RFC 822^std11(-> 2822^prop).

This fourth document, RFC 2048(-> 4289 | 4288), specifies various IANA registration procedures for the following MIME facilities:

1. media types,
2. external body access types,
3. content-transfer-encodings.

Registration of character sets for use in MIME is covered elsewhere and is no longer addressed by this document.

These documents are revisions of RFCs 1521(-> 2049^draft | 2048(-> 4289 | 4288) | 2047^draft | 2046^draft | 2045^draft) and 1522(-> 2049^draft | 2048(-> 4289 | 4288) | 2047^draft | 2046^draft | 2045^draft), which themselves were revisions of RFCs 1341(-> 1521(-> 2049^draft | 2048(-> 4289 | 4288) | 2047^draft | 2046^draft | 2045^draft)) and 1342(-> 1522(-> 2049^draft | 2048(-> 4289 | 4288) | 2047^draft | 2046^draft | 2045^draft)). An appendix in RFC 2049^draft describes differences and changes from previous versions.

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