 what is mime mime stands for multipurpose internet mail extensions it is the standard for how to send multipart multimedia and binary data using the world wide internet email system typical uses of mime include sending images audio wordprocessing documents programs or even plain text files when it is important that the mail system does not modify any part of the file mime also allows for labelling message parts so that a recipient or mail program may determine what to do with them how can i read a mime message since mime is only a few years old there are still some mailers in use which do not understand mime messages however there are a growing number of mail programs that have mime support built in one popular mime capable mailer for unix vms and pcs is pine developed at the university of washington and available via anonymous ftp from the host URL in the file pine pine tar z in addition several proprietary email systems provide mime translation capability in their internet gateway products however even if you do not have access to a mime capable mailer or suitable gateway there is still hope there are a number of stand alone programs that can interpret a mime message one of the more versatile is called munpack it was developed at carnegie mellon university and is available via anonymous ftp from the host URL in the directory pub mpack there are versions available for unix pc mac and amiga systems for compabibility with older forms of transferring binary files the munpack program can also decode messages in split uuencoded format does mime replace uuencode yes uuencode has been used for some time for encoding binary files so that they can be sent via internet mail but it has several technical limitations and interoperability problems mime uses a more robust encoding called baseNUMBER which has been carefully designed to survive the message transformations made by certain email gateways how can i learn more about mime the mime internet standard is described in rfc NUMBER available via anonymous ftp from many different internet hosts including o us east coast address URL NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER o us west coast address URL NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER o pacific rim address URL NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER o europe address URL NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER look for the file rfc rfcNUMBER txt another source of information is the internet news group comp mail mime which includes a periodic posting of a frequently asked questions list URL 