Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME)

MIME: MIME Specific technical definition
New MIME headers The Content-type headers The Application-type headers The Content-transfer-Encoding The Content-ID &Content Description Multipart Message Non-ASCII text in mail messages
MIME:
The Content-type Applications ContentSubtypes: Postscript Octet-Stream-Unidentified binary data Many other will be added
MIME: The Content-transfer-Encoding Content-transferBase64 encoding algorithm is used to encode binary data in 7bit ASCII data Quoted-printable is for text-only messages A few others 7bit No encoding Case insensitive 8bit No encoding Binary No encoding X-token No encoding Example
MIME:
What exactly is MIME?
In 1992, a new standard was defined by an Internet engineering task force working group in RFC1521 & 1522 called MIME. MIME is an extension to the Internet mail standard, known as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) that allows mail messages containing different type of multimedia information to be sent across the network this includes, but is not limited to, word-processor documents, spreadsheets, programs, graphics, audio, and motion picture files, as well as links that enable users to retrieve information from remote databases from within a mail message.
MIME:
Cont…
MIME is defined to be completely backwards compatible, yet flexible and open to extensions. Therefore, it builds on the older standard by defining additional fields for the mail message header, that describes new content types, and a distinct organization of the message body.
MIME:
Summary
MIME:
Cont…
Uses a new binary encoding scheme called BASE 64 New SMTP headers describe the attached document User agents read the header to figure out how to interpret the message
MIME:
New MIME headers
Required fields MIME - Version Date - Time Optional fields Content- type Content-transfer_encoding Content-ID Content-description Conte
When using the MIME standard, messages can contain the following types: Text message in US-ASCII Character set other than US-ASCII Multiple objects in a single messages Multimedia; Image, Audio, and Video messages Multi-front messages Messages of unlimited length Binary files
MIME:
Cont…
MIME is a specification for enhancing the capabilities of standard Internet e-mail. It offers a simple standardized way to represent and encode a wide variety of media types of transmission via Internet mail. It is defines extensions to SMTP to support binary attachments of arbitrary format. The designers of MIME have learned a lot from the old SMTP protocol and its mailers. MIME is here to stay and it works.
MIME:
The Content-type Header ContentContent-type sub-type describes what format this part of the message is in Text Image Message Audio Application Video Multipart The default type is simple ASCII text MIME-Version : 1.0 Content-type:text/plain;charset=US-ascii
MultiMulti-purpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME)
By
Neetu Bharti Trainee,NCSI, IISC,Bangalore-12 2001-2002
Date of Presentation:07/Mar/2002
MIME:
Contents
MIME:
How MIME works?
The developers of MIME found a clever way to work around the limitation. It packages different data types into a 7-bit ASCII format. that way, all e-mail, regardless of the data it contains, appears as standard e-mail messages to the internet’s SMTP servers. The beauty of the solution lies in the fact that SMTP didn’t have to change to handle such data.
Definition of MIME Introduction What exactly is MIME? How it Works? MIME-Specific Technical Definitions Example of MIME Summary
MIME:
Definition of MIME
“MIME, stand for Multi-purpose Internet mail
Extensions, is a freely available specification that offers a way to interchange text in languages with different character sets, and multimedia e-mail among many different computer system that use Internet mail standards. ”
MIME:
Introduction
MIME extends the format of Internet mail to allow nonUS-ASCII textual messages, non-textual messages, multipart message bodies, and non-US-ASCII information in message headers. MIME provides Internet mail users with functionality similar to that of MS-Mail for LAN-based internal mail. MS-Mail and MIME allow the attachment of files and other objects, as does MIME. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s method of handling these attachments is undertaken through a proprietary format and MS-Mail does not provide compliance with the MIME open standard.