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13.3 MIME contents encodings

RFC 2045 defines two 7-bit surfaces, meant to prepare 8-bit messages for transmission. Base64 is especially usable for binary entities, while Quoted-Printable is especially usable for text entities, in those case the lower 128 characters of the underlying charset coincide with ASCII.

Base64
This surface is available in recode under the name Base64, with b64 and 64 as acceptable aliases.

Quoted-Printable
This surface is available in recode under the name Quoted-Printable, with quote-printable and QP as acceptable aliases.

Note that UTF-7, which may be also considered as a MIME surface, is provided as a genuine charset instead, as it necessary relates to UCS-2 and nothing else. See section 5.3 Universal Transformation Format, 7 bits.

A little historical note, also showing the three levels of acceptance of Internet standards. MIME changed from a "Proposed Standard" (RFC 1341--1344, 1992) to a "Draft Standard" (RFC 1521--1523) in 1993, and was recycled as a "Draft Standard" in 1996-11. It is not yet a "Full Standard".


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