Re: [WinMac] Mime vs. HTML mail;Netscape vs. OE
Bruce Johnson(johnson[at]Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU)
Mon, 25 Oct 1999 17:41:24 -0700
Robert F. Crean wrote:
> Can someone explain the difference between Mime, html, plain text, and, with
> attachments what does encoding (base 64 etc) have to do with the above or
> vice versa.
MIME: 'Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions' The standard way of
encoding Internet Mail attachments.
html: is plain text, but with html encodings so a web browser, or some
variant thereof, such as a mail reader will display the code properly.
Netscape uses this to send fancy formatted email messages.
plain text: the Canonic GOOD WAY to send e-mail messages. Everybody can
read this.
rtf: 'Rich Text Format' is another way of sending fancy formatted
e-mail, typically from OE.
Both Netscape and OE will attach useless email dongles to messages if
you have it set, such as Netscapes Address cards, and things like
winmail.dat. Both make the presumption that everyone in the world uses
the same e-mail reader, and of course they can see these things like
they're intended.
Base 64 is one way of encoding binary files for sending as MIME
attachments. According to the INternet Mail standard, _everything_ has
to be 7-bit (ie text) so ways of converting binary data to text format
have been devised, such as base64, binhex, and uuencode (among others).
--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group
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