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# The Debian MIME support sub-policy

## Abstract

This manual describes the policy requirements for the MIME support system used in the Debian distribution. This document is part of the policy package for Debian. The policy package itself is maintained by a group of maintainers that have no editorial powers. At the moment, the list of maintainers is:

1. Julian Gilbey `J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk`

2. Manoj Srivastava `srivasta@debian.org`

## Copyright Notice

Copyright ©1999 .

This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL` in the Debian distribution or on the World Wide Web at `The GNU General Public Licence`. You can also obtain it by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

## Contents

- 1 About this document
- 2 MIME support mechanism
  - 2.1 Background
  - 2.2 MIME support implementation

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# The Debian MIME support sub-policy
Chapter 1 - About this document

This document is distributed as the `mime-policy` files in the Debian package ``debian-policy``. It is also available from the Debian web mirrors at ``/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/``.

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# The Debian MIME support sub-policy
Chapter 2 - MIME support mechanism

If you need assistance implementing this sub-policy, please please ask for it on the debian-devel mailing list. If you have proposals for changes or additions to this sub-policy, please bring it up on debian-policy.

## 2.1 Background

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, RFC 1521) is a mechanism for encoding files and datastreams and providing meta-information about them, in particular their type (e.g. audio or video) and format (e.g. PNG, HTML, MP3).

Registration of MIME type handlers allows programs like mail user agents and web browsers to to invoke these handlers to view, edit or display MIME types they don't support directly.

## 2.2 MIME support implementation

The `mime-support` package provides the `update-mime` program which allows packages to register programs that can show, compose, edit or print MIME types.

Packages containing such programs must register them with `update-mime` as documented in `update-mime(8)`. They should not depend on, recommend, or suggest `mime-support`. Instead, they should just put something like the following in the `postinst` and `postrm` scripts:

           if [ -x /usr/sbin/update-mime ]; then
               update-mime
           fi

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The Debian MIME support sub-policy