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Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.
Mime extends the text only capabilities of the original internet e-mail
protocol smtp,
allowing people to exchange different kinds of information such as sound,
video and still images. Many e-mail clients can encode and decode a file
attachment in the mime format, and most browsers can display
mime-encoded files; but users still fall foul of these encoding
schemes. A file sent in mime format can only be read by software that
also speaks mime, which is a problem for owners of programs that only
understand other algorithms such as uuencode. Such incompatibilities
are often the cause of those long, mystifying e-mails full of garbage. |