The Multipart/Report Media Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages
RFC 6522

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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                 M. Kucherawy, Ed.
Request for Comments: 6522                                     Cloudmark
STD: 73                                                     January 2012
Obsoletes: 3462
Category: Standards Track
ISSN: 2070-1721

                  The Multipart/Report Media Type for
          the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages

Abstract

   The multipart/report Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
   media type is a general "family" or "container" type for electronic
   mail reports of any kind.  Although this memo defines only the use of
   the multipart/report media type with respect to delivery status
   reports, mail processing programs will benefit if a single media type
   is used for all kinds of reports.

   This memo obsoletes "The Multipart/Report Content Type for the
   Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages", RFC 3462, and
   marks RFC 3462 and its predecessor as "Historic".

Status of This Memo

   This is an Internet Standards Track document.

   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).  Further information on
   Internet Standards is available in 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/rfc6522.

Kucherawy                    Standards Track                    [Page 1]
RFC 6522               Multipart/Report Media Type          January 2012

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 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
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

   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
   2. Document Conventions ............................................3
   3. The Multipart/Report Media Type .................................3
   4. The text/rfc822-headers Media Type ..............................5
   5. Registering New Report Types ....................................7
   6. IANA Considerations .............................................7
   7. Security Considerations .........................................7
   8. References ......................................................7
      8.1. Normative References .......................................7
      8.2. Informative References .....................................8
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgements ......................................9

Kucherawy                    Standards Track                    [Page 2]
RFC 6522               Multipart/Report Media Type          January 2012

1.  Introduction

   [OLD-REPORT] and its antecedent declared the multipart/report media
   type for use within the [MIME] construct to create a container for
   mail system administrative reports of various kinds.

   Practical experience has shown that the general requirement of having
   that media type constrained to be used only as the outermost MIME
   type of a message is overly restrictive and limits such things as the
   transmission of multiple administrative reports within a single
   overall message container.  In particular, it prevents one from
   forwarding a report as part of another multipart MIME message.

   This memo removes that constraint.  No other changes apart from some
   editorial ones are made.  Other memos might update other documents to
   establish or clarify the constraints on use of multipart/report in
   contexts where such are needed.