7.3.2. The Message/Partial subtype

A subtype of message, "partial", is defined in order to allow large objects to be delivered as several separate pieces of mail and automatically reassembled by the receiving user agent. (The concept is similar to IP fragmentation/reassembly in the basic Internet Protocols.) This mechanism can be used when intermediate transport agents limit the size of individual messages that can be sent. Content-Type "message/partial" thus indicates that the body contains a fragment of a larger message.

Three parameters must be specified in the Content-Type field of type message/partial: The first, "id", is a unique identifier, as close to a world-unique identifier as possible, to be used to match the parts together. (In general, the identifier is essentially a message-id; if placed in double quotes, it can be any message-id, in accordance with the BNF for "parameter" given earlier in this specification.) The second, "number", an integer, is the part number, which indicates where this part fits into the sequence of fragments. The third, "total", another integer, is the total number of parts. This third subfield is required on the final part, and is optional (though encouraged) on the earlier parts. Note also that these parameters may be given in any order.

Thus, part 2 of a 3-part message may have either of the following header fields:

                Content-Type: Message/Partial;
                     number=2; total=3;
                     id="oc=jpbe0M2Yt4s@thumper.bellcore.com"

                Content-Type: Message/Partial;
                     id="oc=jpbe0M2Yt4s@thumper.bellcore.com";
                     number=2

But part 3 MUST specify the total number of parts:

                Content-Type: Message/Partial;
                     number=3; total=3;
                     id="oc=jpbe0M2Yt4s@thumper.bellcore.com"

Note that part numbering begins with 1, not 0.

When the parts of a message broken up in this manner are put together, the result is a complete MIME entity, which may have its own Content-Type header field, and thus may contain any other data type.

Message fragmentation and reassembly: The semantics of a reassembled partial message must be those of the "inner" message, rather than of a message containing the inner message. This makes it possible, for example, to send a large audio message as several partial messages, and still have it appear to the recipient as a simple audio message rather than as an encapsulated message containing an audio message. That is, the encapsulation of the message is considered to be "transparent".

When generating and reassembling the parts of a message/partial message, the headers of the encapsulated message must be merged with the headers of the enclosing entities. In this process the following rules must be observed:

1. All of the header fields from the initial enclosing entity (part one), except those that start with "Content-" and the specific header fields "Message-ID", "Encrypted", and "MIME- Version", must be copied, in order, to the new message.

2. Only those header fields in the enclosed message which start with "Content-" and "Message-ID", "Encrypted", and "MIME-Version" must be appended, in order, to the header fields of the new message. Any header fields in the enclosed message which do not start with "Content-" (except for "Message-ID", "Encrypted", and "MIME-Version") will be ignored.

3. All of the header fields from the second and any subsequent messages will be ignored.

For example, if an audio message is broken into two parts, the first part might look something like this:

      X-Weird-Header-1: Foo
      From: Bill@host.com
      To: joe@otherhost.com
      Subject: Audio mail
      Message-ID: <id1@host.com>
      MIME-Version: 1.0
      Content-type: message/partial;
           id="ABC@host.com";
           number=1; total=2

      X-Weird-Header-1: Bar
      X-Weird-Header-2: Hello
      Message-ID: <anotherid@foo.com>
      MIME-Version: 1.0
      Content-type: audio/basic
      Content-transfer-encoding: base64

      ... first half of encoded audio data goes here...

and the second half might look something like this:

      From: Bill@host.com
      To: joe@otherhost.com
      Subject: Audio mail
      MIME-Version: 1.0
      Message-ID: <id2@host.com>
      Content-type: message/partial;
           id="ABC@host.com"; number=2; total=2

      ... second half of encoded audio data goes here...

Then, when the fragmented message is reassembled, the resulting message to be displayed to the user should look something like this:

      X-Weird-Header-1: Foo
      From: Bill@host.com
      To: joe@otherhost.com
      Subject: Audio mail
      Message-ID: <anotherid@foo.com>
      MIME-Version: 1.0
      Content-type: audio/basic
      Content-transfer-encoding: base64

      ... first half of encoded audio data goes here...
      ... second half of encoded audio data goes here...

Note on encoding of MIME entities encapsulated inside message/partial entities: Because data of type "message" may never be encoded in base64 or quoted-printable, a problem might arise if message/partial entities are constructed in an environment that supports binary or 8-bit transport. The problem is that the binary data would be split into multiple message/partial objects, each of them requiring binary transport. If such objects were encountered at a gateway into a 7- bit transport environment, there would be no way to properly encode them for the 7-bit world, aside from waiting for all of the parts, reassembling the message, and then encoding the reassembled data in base64 or quoted-printable. Since it is possible that different parts might go through different gateways, even this is not an acceptable solution. For this reason, it is specified that MIME entities of type message/partial must always have a content- transfer-encoding of 7-bit (the default). In particular, even in environments that support binary or 8-bit transport, the use of a content-transfer-encoding of "8bit" or "binary" is explicitly prohibited for entities of type message/partial.

It should be noted that, because some message transfer agents may choose to automatically fragment large messages, and because such agents may use different fragmentation thresholds, it is possible that the pieces of a partial message, upon reassembly, may prove themselves to comprise a partial message. This is explicitly permitted.

It should also be noted that the inclusion of a "References" field in the headers of the second and subsequent pieces of a fragmented message that references the Message-Id on the previous piece may be of benefit to mail readers that understand and track references. However, the generation of such "References" fields is entirely optional.

Finally, it should be noted that the "Encrypted" header field has been made obsolete by Privacy Enhanced Messaging (PEM), but the rules above are believed to describe the correct way to treat it if it is encountered in the context of conversion to and from message/partial fragments.