Editing MIME (section)

{{Short description|Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions}}
{{About||mime as a performing art form|Mime artist|other uses|Mime (disambiguation)}}
'''Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions''' ('''MIME''') is a standard that extends the format of [[email]] messages to support text in [[character set]]s other than [[ASCII]], as well as [[Email attachment|attachments]] of audio, video, images, and application programs.  Message bodies may consist of multiple parts, and header information may be specified in non-ASCII character sets. Email messages with MIME formatting are typically transmitted with standard protocols, such as the [[Simple Mail Transfer Protocol]] (SMTP), the [[Post Office Protocol]] (POP), and the [[Internet Message Access Protocol]] (IMAP).

MIME is an [[Internet standard]]. It is specified in a series of [[Request for Comments|requests for comments]]: {{tooltip|2= (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies (Nov 1996) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2045 RFC 2045]}},
{{tooltip|2= (MIME) Part Two: Media Types (Nov 1996) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2046 RFC 2046]}},
{{tooltip|2= (MIME) Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text (Nov 1996) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2047 RFC 2047]}},
{{tooltip|2= (MIME) Media Type Specifications and Registration Procedures (Dec 2005) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4288 RFC 4288]}},
{{tooltip|2= (MIME) Part Four: Registration Procedures (Dec 2005) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4289 RFC 4289]}} and 
{{tooltip|2= (MIME) Part Five: Conformance Criteria and Examples (Nov 1996) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2049 RFC 2049]}}. The integration with SMTP email is specified in 
{{tooltip|2= (MIME) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies (Sep 1993) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1521 RFC 1521]}} and 
{{tooltip|2= (MIME) Part Two: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text (Sep 1993) | [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1522 RFC 1522]}}.

Although the MIME formalism was designed mainly for SMTP, its content types are also important in other [[protocol (computing)|communication protocols]]. In the [[Hypertext Transfer Protocol]] (HTTP) for the [[World Wide Web]], servers insert a MIME header field at the beginning of any Web transmission. Clients use the [[content type]] or [[media type]] header to select an appropriate viewer application for the type of data indicated.