WARNING
    MIME-AltWords requires MIME::Base64 and MIME::QuotedPrint.  It will work
    with versions as old as 2.20, but some tests (when you do "make test")
    will fail for MIME::QuotedPrint older than 3.03.

NAME
    MIME::AltWords - properly deal with RFC-1522 encoded words

SYNOPSIS
    The Perl module MIME::AltWords is recommended for encoding and decoding
    MIME words (such as "=?ISO-8859-2?Q?_=E1ll_e=E1r?=") found in e-mail
    message headers (mostly Subject, From and To).

    MIME::AltWords is similar to MIME::Words in MIME::Tools, but it provides
    an alternate implementation that follows the MIME specification more
    carefully, and it is actually compatible with existing mail software
    (tested with Mutt, Pine, JavaMail and OpenWebmail). MIME::AltWords
    extends the functionality of MIME::Words (version 5.420) by adding more
    functions and more options to existing functions. The original interface
    is changed in an upward-compatible way.

    Before reading further, you should see MIME::Tools to make sure that you
    understand where this module fits into the grand scheme of things. Go
    on, do it now. I'll wait.

    Ready? Ok...

        use MIME::AltWords qw(:all);   
     
        ### Decode the string into another string, forgetting the charsets:
        $decoded = decode_mimewords(
              'To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>',
              );
    
        ### Split string into array of decoded [DATA,CHARSET] pairs:
        @decoded = decode_mimewords(
              'To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>',
              );
     
        ### Encode a single unsafe word:
        $encoded = encode_mimeword("\xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");
    
        ### Encode a string, trying to find the unsafe words inside it: 
        $encoded = encode_mimewords("Me and \xABFran\xE7ois\xBB in town");

DESCRIPTION
    Fellow Americans, you probably won't know what the hell this module is
    for. Europeans, Russians, et al, you probably do. ":-)".

    For example, here's a valid MIME header you might get:

          From: =?US-ASCII?Q?Keith_Moore?= <moore@cs.utk.edu>
          To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>
          CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_?= Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
          Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?B?SWYgeW91IGNhbiByZWFkIHRoaXMgeW8=?=
           =?ISO-8859-2?B?dSB1bmRlcnN0YW5kIHRoZSBleGFtcGxlLg==?=
           =?US-ASCII?Q?.._cool!?=

    The fields basically decode to (sorry, I can only approximate the Latin
    characters with 7 bit sequences /o and 'e):

          From: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
          To: Keld J/orn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>
          CC: Andr'e  Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
          Subject: If you can read this you understand the example... cool!

PUBLIC INTERFACE
    encode_mimewords RAW, [OPTS]
        *Function.* Given a RAW string, try to find and encode all "unsafe"
        sequences of characters:

            ### Encode a string with some unsafe "words":
            $encoded = encode_mimewords("Me and \xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

        Returns the encoded string. Any arguments past the RAW string are
        taken to define a hash of options:

        Charset
            Encode all unsafe stuff with this charset. Default is
            'ISO-8859-1', a.k.a. "Latin-1".

        Encoding
            The encoding to use, "q" or "b". The default is "q".

        Field
            Name of the mail field this string will be used in. *Currently
            ignored.*

        Note: this is a stable, tested, widely compatible solution. Strict
        compliance with RFC-1522 (regarding the use of encoded words in
        message headers), however, was not proven, but strings returned by
        this function work properly and identically with Mutt, Pine,
        JavaMail and OpenWebmail. The recommended way is to use this
        function instead of "encode_mimeword()" or "encode_mimewords" in
        MIME::Words.

    encode_mimeword RAW, [ENCODING], [CHARSET]
        *Function.* Encode a single RAW "word" that has unsafe characters.
        The "word" will be encoded in its entirety.

            ### Encode "<<Franc,ois>>":
            $encoded = encode_mimeword("\xABFran\xE7ois\xBB");

        You may specify the ENCODING ("Q" or "B"), which defaults to "Q".
        You may specify the CHARSET, which defaults to "iso-8859-1".

    decode_mimewords ENCODED, [OPTS...]
        *Function.* Go through the string looking for RFC-1522-style "Q"
        (quoted-printable, sort of) or "B" (base64) encoding, and decode
        them.

        In an array context, splits the ENCODED string into a list of
        decoded "[DATA, CHARSET]" pairs, and returns that list. Unencoded
        data are returned in a 1-element array "[DATA]", giving an effective
        CHARSET of "undef".

            $enc = '=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>';
            foreach (decode_mimewords($enc)) {
                print "", ($_[1] || 'US-ASCII'), ": ", $_[0], "\n";
            }

        In a scalar context, joins the "data" elements of the above list
        together, and returns that. *Note: this is not information-lossy,*
        it sanitizes the returned string to use a specific, single charset,
        either specified using the "Charset" option, or autodetecting one
        (ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2 or UTF-8) which can accomodate all
        characters. In case of charset autodetection,
        "get_best_decode_charset(ENCODED)" can be used to query the charset
        autodetected.

        You might want to see "unmime" in MIME::WordDecoder as an alternate
        of MIME::AltWords::encode_mimewords.

        In the event of a syntax error, $@ will be set to a description of
        the error, but parsing will continue as best as possible (so as to
        get *something* back when decoding headers). $@ will be false if no
        error was detected.

        Any arguments past the ENCODED string are taken to define a hash of
        options:

        Field
            Name of the mail field this string came from. *Currently
            ignored.*

NOTES
    Exports its principle functions by default, in keeping with MIME::Base64
    and MIME::QuotedPrint.

    Doesn't depend on MIME::Words or MIME::Tools. All the shared code is
    copied to MIME::AltWords0, which is bundled.

    See also <http://www.szszi.hu/wiki/Sympa4Patches> for the previous
    version of MIME::AltWords integrated into the Sympa 4 mailing list
    software.

AUTHOR
    MIME::AltWords was written by Péter Szabó (pts@fazekas.hu) in 2006,
    and it has been uploaded to CPAN on 2006-09-27.

    MIME::AltWords uses code from MIME::Words (in the file
    "lib/MIME/AltWords0.pm") and it uses documentation from MIME::Words (in
    the files "lib/MIME/AltWords0.pm" and "lib/MIME/AltWords.pm").

    Here is the original author and copyright information for MIME::Words.

    Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com), ZeeGee Software Inc (http://www.zeegee.com).
    David F. Skoll (dfs@roaringpenguin.com) http://www.roaringpenguin.com

    All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute
    it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

    Thanks also to...

          Kent Boortz        For providing the idea, and the baseline 
                             RFC-1522-decoding code!
          KJJ at PrimeNet    For requesting that this be split into
                             its own module.
          Stephane Barizien  For reporting a nasty bug.

VERSION
    See $VERSION in "lib/MIME/AltWords.pm" .