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by layer8 1028 days ago
SHOULD is a recommendation, not a requirement, and it refers only to newly-defined header fields, not existing ones. The text implies that 8-bit characters in existing fields are to be interpreted as ISO-8859-1.
1 comments

There is a RFC (2119) that specifies what SHOULD means in RFCs:

> SHOULD This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119