If that doesn't do it for you, go visit IETF
(
http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html) and read the RFCs about MIME (RFC1341
looks like a good start).
A thorough understanding of the following is invaluable:
RFC 821 – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (August 1982)
RFC 2821 – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (April 2001)
RFC 1651 – SMTP Service Extensions (July 1994)
RFC 1652 – SMTP Service Extension for 8-bit MIME transport (July 1994)
RFC 1653 – SMTP Service Extension for Message Size Declaration (July 1994)
RFC 822 – Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (August
1982)
RFC 2822 – Internet Message Format (April 2001)
RFC 1049 – A Content-type Header Field for Internet Messages (March 1988)
RFC 2045 – Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, Part One: Format of
Internet Message Bodies (November 1996)
RFC 2046 – Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, Part Two: Media Types
(November 1996)
RFC 2047 – Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), Part Three: Message
Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text (November 1996)
RFC 2048 -- Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), Part Four:
Registration Procedures (November 1996)
RFC 2049 – Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), Part Five:
Conformance Criteria and Examples (November 1996)
RFC 2231 – MIME Parameter Value and Encoded Word Extensions: Character Sets,
Languages, and Continuations
RFC 2111 -- Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource Locators
RFC 2183 – Communicating Presentation Information in Internet Messages: The
Content-Disposition Header Field.
RFC 2476 – Message Submission (December 1998)
RFC 2554 – SMTP Service Extension for Authentication (March 1999)
RFC 3207 – SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer
Security (February 2002)
RFC 3013 / BCP 46 – Recommended Internet Service Provider Security Services
and Procedures (November 2000)
RFC 2076 -- Common Internet Message Headers
Common Internet Message Header Fields – an Internet draft revision to RFC
2076.
IANA Message Headers Registry -
http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-
headers/message-header-index.html
IANA Character Set Registry -
http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets
IANA MIME Content-Type Registry -
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-
types/index.html
Joel Spolsky, “The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely,
Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)” -
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/codepages.html
http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html
Cheers
GRB
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Greg R. Broderick [rot13] (e-mail address removed)
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