POP3 Support for UTF-8
RFC 5721

• Status
• IESG evaluation record
• IESG writeups
• Email expansions
• History

• Versions
• 09

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                        R. Gellens
Request for Comments: 5721                         QUALCOMM Incorporated
Category: Experimental                                         C. Newman
ISSN: 2070-1721                                         Sun Microsystems
                                                           February 2010

                         POP3 Support for UTF-8

Abstract

   This specification extends the Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3)
   to support un-encoded international characters in user names,
   passwords, mail addresses, message headers, and protocol-level
   textual error strings.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for examination, experimental implementation, and
   evaluation.

   This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
   community.  This document is a product of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  It represents the consensus of the IETF
   community.  It has received public review and has been approved for
   publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).  Not
   all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of
   Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5721.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Gellens & Newman              Experimental                      [Page 1]
RFC 5721                 POP3 Support for UTF-8            February 2010

   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
   Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
   the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
   outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
   not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
   it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
   than English.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
     1.1.  Conventions Used in This Document  . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  LANG Capability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.  UTF8 Capability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.1.  The UTF8 Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.2.  USER Argument to UTF8 Capability . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.  Native UTF-8 Maildrops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   5.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   6.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     7.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   Appendix A.  Design Rationale  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   Appendix B.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Gellens & Newman              Experimental                      [Page 2]
RFC 5721                 POP3 Support for UTF-8            February 2010

1.  Introduction

   This document forms part of the Email Address Internationalization
   (EAI) experiment described in the EAI Framework document [RFC4952]
   (for background, please see the charter of the EAI working group) and
   should be evaluated within the context of EAI.  As part of the
   overall EAI work, email messages may be transmitted and delivered
   containing un-encoded UTF-8 characters, and mail drops that are
   accessed using POP3 [RFC1939] might natively store UTF-8.

   This specification extends POP3 [RFC1939] using the POP3 extension
   mechanism [RFC2449] to permit un-encoded UTF-8 [RFC3629] in headers,
   as described in "Internationalized Email Headers" [RFC5335].  It also
   adds a mechanism to support login names and passwords outside the