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MH-MIME(7mh)                                                      MH-MIME(7mh)

NAME
       mh-mime - overview of nmh MIME message composition and display

DESCRIPTION
       The  acronym MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, the
       format of Internet messages used to send multi-media content.  The  nmh
       command  suite has support for the display and composition of MIME mes-
       sages, but currently MIME support is not completely integrated into all
       tools.   This  document  provides an overview as to which tools support
       MIME message display, storage, and composition.

   Local Character Set Conversion
       All of the nmh commands convert non-native character sets to the  local
       character  set,  as  specified by the operating system locale settings.
       See locale(1) for more details on the environment variables used to set
       the local character set.  Character set conversion will only take place
       if nmh was built with iconv(3) support.  See the  mhparam(1)  man  page
       for  how  to  determine whether your nmh installation includes iconv(3)
       support.

       Depending on the source and target character set, it may not be  possi-
       ble to convert all characters to the local character set.  In this case
       a substitution character will be used for the characters that cannot be
       converted.

   Message Display
       The  default  format used by scan(1) will automatically decode MIME-en-
       coded headers.  If you have a custom scan format, see the examples pro-
       vided with the nmh distribution (found in the "/etc/nmh" directory) and
       mh-format(5) for details on how to make  sure  your  MIME  headers  are
       properly decoded.

       By  default,  if show detects that it is reading a MIME message it will
       invoke mhshow(1).  The default behavior of mhshow is  to  only  display
       text  parts  that are not marked as attachments.  See mhshow(1) for de-
       tails on how to control what mhshow will display.

   Message Interrogation and Storage
       The mhlist(1) command will display a listing of  the  MIME  parts  con-
       tained  within  a message.  That information can be used in conjunction
       with the mhstore command to save individual parts or content types of a
       message.   See  mhlist(1)  and mhstore(1) for more details on how these
       commands work.

   Message Composition and Reply
       All messages sent by send(1) will automatically  be  processed  by  mh-
       build(1)  before  being  passed to post(1) for message submission.  mh-
       build will use the locale settings to mark text content with the appro-
       priate  character set and apply any necessary encoding.  If you wish to
       include text in your message using a character set that does not  match
       your  locale,  you  will need to specify the character set using an mh-
       build directive; see mhbuild(1) for more information.

       For attaching files or composing other non-text content, there are  two
       options: the attach system and mhbuild directives.

       The  attach  system  is best suited for content where one or more files
       are being attached to a message.  You can use the attach system by  ei-
       ther  using the attach command at the "What now?" prompt, or by insert-
       ing an "Attach:" header in the message draft containing the name of the
       file  you  wish to attach to the message (note that all the attach com-
       mand does is place an "Attach:" header in the message draft).   mhbuild
       will  then  automatically include the specified file(s) in the outgoing
       message.  See send(1) for details on how mhbuild determines the  proper
       content type of attached files.

       The  other  method  of composing MIME messages is to use mhbuild direc-
       tives.  This allows exact control over the contents and format  of  the
       MIME  message,  but has a more complicated syntax.  mhbuild(1) contains
       details on the directive syntax and examples of directives for  differ-
       ent  media  types.  It is important to note that when using mhbuild di-
       rectives the user must run mhbuild outside of send to have  it  process
       directives;  when  being  run  by  send,  mhbuild  is configured to not
       process directives so normal user text is not mistaken for a directive.
       When  using  directives  a  user typically uses the mime command at the
       "What now?" prompt to process them.

       When replying to messages using repl(1) the traditional  MH  method  of
       including  the  original  text  in the reply does not interoperate with
       MIME messages.  The -convertargs switch to repl(1) provides  one  solu-
       tion.       Another      solution:       the      contrib     directory
       (/usr/share/doc/nmh/contrib) contains a Perl program called replyfilter
       which  will decode text parts and present them in an appropriate manner
       to be included in a message reply.  See the comments at the top of  re-
       plyfilter for instructions on how to configure nmh to work with it.

   Message Rewrite
       The  mhfixmsg(1) command can apply various transformations to MIME mes-
       sages, including decoding of text parts, converting the  character  set
       of  text parts, and insertion of text/plain parts to correspond to text
       parts of other subtypes.  mhfixmsg can also repair defects in MIME mes-
       sages,  such  as  mismatched  top-level boundary indicators and invalid
       Content-Transfer-Encoding values.

SEE ALSO
       comp(1), iconv(3), mh-format(5)  mhbuild(1),  mhfixmsg(1),  mhparam(1),
       nmh(7), repl(1), whatnow(1),
       /usr/share/doc/nmh/contrib/replyfilter,
       /usr/share/doc/nmh/contrib/replaliases

BUGS
       MIME  support  should be more integrated into all of the nmh tools than
       it currently is.

nmh-1.7.1                         2014-12-15                      MH-MIME(7mh)