Facts on MIME Format

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By Andy Kirmayer
eHow Contributing Writer

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Sending e-mail is pretty much a fact of life for most people. Many are unaware of the limitations that the ASCII-based messages originally had. MIME allows e-mail to contain multiple types of text as well as different types of attachments that are routinely sent along with it. It is a set of extensions to standard e-mail and defines the properties of that e-mail.

History

MIME, or Multipurpose Internet Email Extensions, was approved in 1992 to replace email standards created in 1982 that could only read ASCII characters in messages that reached only a certain length.

Significance

MIME allows different kinds of text to be included in e-mail, such as characters unique to languages such as German or Chinese, as well as images and video, so that communication possibilities around the world are expanded beyond the technical limitations of ASCII.

Function

In the MIME format, header fields are used to define first the format version; then content type, such as the message itself, images, audio, video, and text; and also to recode to the desired format.

Benefits

The MIME Internet standard allows e-mail to contain text that is not ASCII, such as characters of languages besides English, attachments other than text, multi-part messages, and headers with character sets that are non-ASCII.

Considerations

Using the MIME format for programming requires a knowledge of C or C++, with programs such as Hunny MIME++ and Hunny JMIME available to help with the development of such applications.