[ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ next ]


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

  1. 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


[ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ next ]


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/.


[ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ next ]


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

[ previous ] [ Contents ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ next ]


The Debian MIME support sub-policy

version 3.9.2.0, 2011-05-01

J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) jdassen@debian.org
The Debian Policy mailing List debian-policy@lists.debian.org