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<debiandoc>
  <!--
  Debian GNU/Linux Menu Sub-Policy Manual.
  Copyright (C)1999 ;

  released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version
  2 or (at your option) any later.

  The debian-policy mailing list has taken responsibility for the
  contents of this document, with the package maintainers responsible
  for packaging adminstrivia only.  
 
  -->
  
  <book>
    <titlepag>
      <title>The Debian MIME support sub-policy</title>
      <author>
	<name>J.H.M. Dassen (Ray)</name>
	<email>jdassen@debian.org</email>
      </author>
      <author>
	<name>The Debian Policy mailing List</name>
	<email>debian-policy@lists.debian.org</email>
      </author>
      <version>version &version;, &date;</version>

      <abstract>
	This manual describes the policy requirements for the MIME support
	system used in the Debian GNU/Linux 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:
	<enumlist>
	  <item>
	    <p>Julian Gilbey <email>J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk</email></p>
	  </item>
	  <item>
	    <p>Manoj Srivastava <email>srivasta@debian.org</email></p>
	  </item>
	</enumlist>
      </abstract>


      <copyright>
	<copyrightsummary>
	  Copyright &copy;1999 .
	</copyrightsummary>
	<p>
	  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.
	</p>

	<p>
	  This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
	  <em>without any warranty</em>; without even the implied
	  warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular
	  purpose.  See the GNU General Public License for more
	  details.
	  </p>
	<p>
	  A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as
	  <tt>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL</tt> in the Debian
	  GNU/Linux distribution or on the World Wide Web at <url
	  id="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html" name="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.
	</p>
      </copyright>
    </titlepag>

    <toc detail="sect">

    <chapt>
      <heading>About this document</heading>
      <p>
	This document is distributed as the <tt>mime-policy</tt> files
	in the Debian package
        <package><url name="debian-policy" id="http://packages.debian.org/debian-policy"></package>.
	It is also available from the Debian web mirrors at
	<tt><url name="/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/"
		id="http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/mime-policy/"></tt>.
      </p>
    </chapt>

    <chapt>
      <heading>MIME support mechanism</heading>
      <p>
	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.
      </p>
      <sect>
        <heading>Background</heading>
        <p>
          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).
        </p>
        
        <p>
          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.
        </p>

      </sect>

      <sect>
	<heading>MIME support implementation</heading>
	<p>
          The <package>mime-support</package> package provides the
          <prgn>update-mime</prgn> program which allows packages to
          register programs that can show, compose, edit or print
          MIME types.
	</p>

	<p>
          Packages containing such programs must register them
          with <prgn>update-mime</prgn> as documented in <manref
          name="update-mime" section="8">. They should <em>not</em> depend
          on, recommend, or suggest <prgn>mime-support</prgn>. Instead,
          they should just put something like the following in the
          <tt>postinst</tt> and <tt>postrm</tt> scripts:

          <example> 
  if [ -x /usr/sbin/update-mime ]; then
      update-mime
  fi
          </example>
	</p>
      </sect>
    </chapt>
  </book>
</debiandoc>
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