Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME).ppt

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions(MIME) CS-328 Dick Steflik MIME Important RFCs RFC-822 Standard for the format for ARPA Internet test messages RFC-2045 MIME Part 1: Format of Internet Message Bodies RFC-2046 MIME Part 2: Media Types RFC-2047 MIME Part 3: Message Header Extensions RFC-2048 MIME Part 4: Registration Procedure RFC-2049 MIME Part 5: Conformance Criteria MIME – What is it? MIME refers to an official Internet standard that specifies how messages must be formatted so that they can be exchanged between different email systems. MIME permits the inclusion of virtually any type of file or document in an email message. Specifically, MIME messages can contain text images audio video application-specific data. spreadsheets word processing documets MIME Features Support of character sets other than ASCII Content type labeling System Support of non-text content in e-mail messages Support for compound documents Non-ASCII Character set support Message header content-type field put in the header by the client program creating the e-mail for use by the client program used to display the received message charset= optional parameter if absent ASCII is assumed Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1 extends the basic character set of ASCII to include many of the accented characters used in languages such as Spanish, French, and German. US-ASCII is the standard character set used in the US Content Labeling a set of registered MIME Types that map to specific file types MIME Types consist of : a primary type a sub type separated by a / ( as text/html) Common Mime Types: Non-text Content To be sent through the e-mail system non-textual content must be converted (encoded) to ASCII for transmission and unencode back to its original format for display upon receipt. originally done via uuencode MIME uses base 64 encoding (RFC 2045) binary to text encoding scheme targets A-Z, a-z,0-9, +,/ scheme: take three byte of data, put in