"MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard to send stuff other than 7Bit ASCII by e-mail." (Claus Aßmann) The standard is composed of three parts: * Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies -- RFC 2045 [ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2045.txt] * Part Two: Media Types -- RFC 2046 [ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2046.txt] * Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text -- RFC 2047 [ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2047.txt] It started as an extension to RFC 822 [ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc822.txt], which describes internet mail, but has a much broader usage.