| Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | A. Melnikov |
| Request for Comments: 6657 | Isode Limited |
| Updates: 2046 | J. Reschke |
| Category: Standards Track | greenbytes |
| ISSN: 2070-1721 | July 2012 |
This document changes RFC 2046 rules regarding default "charset" parameter values for "text/*" media types to better align with common usage by existing clients and servers.¶
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/rfc6657.¶
Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶
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RFC 2046 specified that the default "charset" parameter (i.e., the value used when the parameter is not specified) is "US-ASCII" (Section 4.1.2 of [RFC2046]). RFC 2616 changed the default for use by HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to be "ISO-8859-1" (Section 3.7.1 of [RFC2616]). This encoding is not very common for new "text/*" media types and a special rule in the HTTP specification adds confusion about which specification ([RFC2046] or [RFC2616]) is authoritative in regards to the default charset for "text/*" media types. ¶
Many complex text subtypes such as "text/html" [RFC2854] and "text/xml" [RFC3023] have internal (to their format) means of describing the charset. Many existing User Agents ignore the default of "US-ASCII" rule for at least "text/html" and "text/xml".¶
This document changes RFC 2046 rules regarding default "charset" parameter values for "text/*" media types to better align with common usage by existing clients and servers. It does not change the defaults for any currently registered media type. ¶
Section 4.1.2 of [RFC2046] says:¶
The default character set, which must be assumed in the absence of a charset parameter, is US-ASCII.¶
As explained in the Introduction section, this rule is considered outdated, so this document replaces it with the following set of rules:¶
Each subtype of the "text" media type that uses the "charset" parameter can define its own default value for the "charset" parameter, including the absence of any default.¶
In order to improve interoperability with deployed agents, "text/*" media type registrations SHOULD either¶
In accordance with option (a) above, registrations for "text/*" media types that can transport charset information inside the corresponding payloads (such as "text/html" and "text/xml") SHOULD NOT specify the use of a "charset" parameter, nor any default value, in order to avoid conflicting interpretations should the "charset" parameter value and the value specified in the payload disagree.¶
Thus, new subtypes of the "text" media type SHOULD NOT define a default "charset" value. If there is a strong reason to do so despite this advice, they SHOULD use the "UTF-8" [RFC3629] charset as the default.¶
Regardless of what approach is chosen, all new "text/*" registrations MUST clearly specify how the charset is determined; relying on the default defined in Section 4.1.2 of [RFC2046] is no longer permitted. However, existing "text/*" registrations that fail to specify how the charset is determined still default to US-ASCII.¶
Specifications covering the "charset" parameter, and what default value, if any, is used, are subtype-specific, NOT protocol-specific. Protocols that use MIME, therefore, MUST NOT override default charset values for "text/*" media types to be different for their specific protocol. The protocol definitions MUST leave that to the subtype definitions.¶
Guessing of the "charset" parameter can lead to security issues such as content buffer overflows, denial of services, or bypass of filtering mechanisms. However, this document does not promote guessing, but encourages use of charset information that is specified by the sender.¶
Conflicting information in-band vs. out-of-band can also lead to similar security problems, and this document recommends the use of charset information that is more likely to be correct (for example, in-band over out-of-band).¶
IANA has updated the "text" subregistry of the Media Types registry (<http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/>) to add the following preamble: "See [RFC6657] for information about 'charset' parameter handling for text media types."¶
Also, IANA has added this RFC to the list of references at the beginning of the Application for Media Type (<http://www.iana.org/form/media-types>).¶
Many thanks to Ned Freed and John Klensin for comments and ideas that motivated creation of this document, and to Carsten Bormann, Murray S. Kucherawy, Barry Leiba, and Henri Sivonen for feedback and text suggestions.¶