NAME

Unicode::IMAPUtf7 - Perl extension to deal with IMAP UTF7

SYNOPSIS

  use Unicode::IMAPUtf7;

  my $t = Unicode::IMAPUtf7->new();
  print $t->encode('Répertoire');
  print $t->decode('R&AOk-pertoire');

**DEPRECATED**

  print Unicode::IMAPUtf7::imap_utf7_encode('R�pertoire');
  print Unicode::IMAPUtf7::imap_utf7_decode('R&AOk-pertoire');

**DEPRECATED**

DESCRIPTION

IMAP mailbox names are encoded in a modified UTF7 when names contains international characters outside of the printable ASCII range. The modified UTF-7 encoding is defined in RFC2060 (section 5.1.3).

METHODS

new(): Returns a new instance of a Unicode::IMAPUtf7 object.
encode($text): Returns the modified UTF7-text for a string in UTF8.
decode($text): Returns the decoded string into UTF8 data.

DEPRECATED METHODS

imap_utf7_encode: returns the modified UTF7-text for a string in Latin1.

imap_utf7_decode: returns the decoded string into Latin1 data.

These functions may disappear in some later version. Please update with the new OO and UTF8 scheme. See Unicode::String for conversion functions between Latin1 and UTF8.

RFC2060 - section 5.1.3 - Mailbox International Naming Convention

By convention, international mailbox names are specified using a modified version of the UTF-7 encoding described in [UTF-7]. The purpose of these modifications is to correct the following problems with UTF-7:

1) UTF-7 uses the "+" character for shifting; this conflicts with the common use of "+" in mailbox names, in particular USENET newsgroup names.

2) UTF-7's encoding is BASE64 which uses the "/" character; this conflicts with the use of "/" as a popular hierarchy delimiter.

3) UTF-7 prohibits the unencoded usage of "\"; this conflicts with the use of "\" as a popular hierarchy delimiter.

4) UTF-7 prohibits the unencoded usage of "~"; this conflicts with the use of "~" in some servers as a home directory indicator.

5) UTF-7 permits multiple alternate forms to represent the same string; in particular, printable US-ASCII chararacters can be represented in encoded form.

In modified UTF-7, printable US-ASCII characters except for "&" represent themselves; that is, characters with octet values 0x20-0x25 and 0x27-0x7e. The character "&" (0x26) is represented by the two- octet sequence "&-".

All other characters (octet values 0x00-0x1f, 0x7f-0xff, and all Unicode 16-bit octets) are represented in modified BASE64, with a further modification from [UTF-7] that "," is used instead of "/". Modified BASE64 MUST NOT be used to represent any printing US-ASCII character which can represent itself.

"&" is used to shift to modified BASE64 and "-" to shift back to US- ASCII. All names start in US-ASCII, and MUST end in US-ASCII (that is, a name that ends with a Unicode 16-bit octet MUST end with a "- ").

For example, here is a mailbox name which mixes English, Japanese, and Chinese text: ~peter/mail/&ZeVnLIqe-/&U,BTFw-

REQUESTS & BUGS

Please report any requests, suggestions or bugs via the RT bug-tracking system at http://rt.cpan.org/ or email to bug-Unicode-IMAPUtf7\@rt.cpan.org.

http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Unicode-IMAPUtf7 is the RT queue for Unicode::IMAPUtf7. Please check to see if your bug has already been reported.

COPYRIGHT

Fabien Potencier, fabpot@cpan.org

This software may be freely copied and distributed under the same terms and conditions as Perl.

POD ERRORS

Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:

Around line 12:: Non-ASCII character seen before =encoding in '$t->encode('Répertoire');'. Assuming UTF-8