RFC # 561 Abhay Bhushan (AKB) MIT-DMCG
NIC # 18516 Ken Pogran (KP) MIT-MULTICS
Ray Tomlinson (RST) BBN-TENEX
Jim White (JEW) SRI-ARC
5 September 73
Standardizing Network Mail Headers
One of the deficiences of the current FTP mail protocol is that
it makes no provision for the explicit specification of such
header information as author, title, and date. Many systems
send that information, but each in a different format. One
fairly serious result of this lack of standardization is that
it's next to impossible for a system or user program to
intelligently process incoming mail.
Although the long-term solution to the problem is probably to
add commands for specifying such information to the mail
protocol command space (as suggested in RFC 524 -- 17140,), we
hereby propose a more quickly implemented solution for the
interim.
We suggest that the text of network mail, whether transmitted
over the FTP telnet connection (via the MAIL command) or over a
separate data connection (with the MLFL command), be governed by
the syntax below:
Example:
From: White at SRI-ARC
Date: 24 JUL 1973 1527-PDT
Subject: Multi-Site Journal Meeting Announcement
NIC: 17996
At 10 AM Wednesday 25-JULY there will be a meeting
to discuss a Multi-Site Journal in the context of
the Utility. Y'all be here.
Formal Syntax:
::=
::= !
::= -
- ::=
! !
!
1
NWG/RFC# 561 AKB KP RST JEW 5-SEP-73 11:19 18516
Standardizing Network Mail Headers RFC 561 / NIC 18516
::= FROM: AT
::= DATE:
RFC, FYI, BCP