Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

Quoted-printable encoding is used where data is mostly US-ASCII text. It allows for 8-bit characters to be represented as their hexadecimal values. For instance, a new line can be forced by using the following string: "=0D=0A". Line lengths are limited to 76 characters. Using an equal sign as the last character on the line as a "soft" line break accommodates longer lines. The 76-character limit does not include the CRLF sequence or the equal sign.

Any character, except the CRLF sequence, can be represented by an equal sign followed by a two-digit hexadecimal representation. This is especially useful in getting mostly text messages to pass reliably through gateways such as EBCDIC where such characters as "{" and "}" have special meaning.