RFC - 733

STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA NETWORK TEXT MESSAGES(1)

Original:	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc733.txt
Authors:	David H. Crocker [The Rand Corporation], John J. Vittal [Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.], Kenneth T. Pogran [Massachusets Institute of Technology], D. Austin Henderson, Jr.(2) [Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.]
Date:	November 1977
Category:	Informational
This specification has been !!! obsoleted !!!

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Obsoleted by:
RFC-822std11 [STD 11]	STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA INTERNET TEXT MESSAGES (Obsoleted by RFC-2822prop) (Updated by RFC-2156prop, RFC-1148, RFC-1138, RFC-1327, RFC-1123std3)

Obsoletes:
RFC-724	Proposed official standard for the format of ARPA Network messages (Obsoleted by RFC-733 -> RFC-822std11 -> RFC-2822prop)

Referred by:	37 RFC
Refers to:	8 RFC

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Abstract

(1)This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, under contract Nos. N00014-75-C-0661, MDA903-76-C-0212, and DAHC15-73-C0181.

(2)The authors' postal addresses are: D. Crocker, The Rand Corporation, Information Sciences Dept., 1700 Main St., Santa Monica, California 90406; J. Vittal & D. A. Henderson, Bolt Beranek & Newman, 50 Moulton St., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138; and K. Pogran, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. The authors' ARPANET addresses are: DCrocker at Rand-Unix, Vittal at BBN- TenexD, Pogran at MIT-Multics, and Henderson at BBN-TenexD.

PREFACE

ARPA's Committee on Computer-Aided Human Communication (CAHCOM) wishes to promulgate a standard for the format of ARPA Network text message (mail) headers which will reasonably meet the needs of the various message service subsystems on the Network today. The authors of this document constitute the CAHCOM subcommittee charged with the task of developing this new standard.

Essentially, we specify a revision to ARPANET Request for Comments (RFC) 561, "Standardizing Network Mail Headers", and RFC 680, "Message Transmission Protocol". This revision removes and compacts portions of the previous syntax and adds several features to network address specification. In particular, we focus on people and not mailboxes as recipients and allow reference to stored address lists. We expect this syntax to provide sufficient capabilities to meet most users' immediate needs and, therefore, give developers enough breathing room to produce a new mail transmission protocol "properly". We believe that there is enough of a consensus in the Network community in favor of such a standard syntax to make possible its adoption at this time. An earlier draft of this specification was published as RFC #724(-> 733(-> 822^std11(-> 2822^prop))), "Proposed Official Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Messages" and contained extensive discussion of the background and issues in ARPANET mail standards.

This specification was developed over the course of one year, using the ARPANET mail environment, itself, to provide an on-going forum for discussing the capabilities to be included. More than twenty individuals, from across the country, participated in this discussion and we would like to acknowledge their considerable efforts. The syntax of the standard was originally specified in the Backus-Naur Form (BNF) meta-language. Ken L. Harrenstien, of SRI International, was responsible for re-coding the BNF into an augmented BNF which compacts the specification and allows increased comprehensibility.

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