Mailing Text and Binary Files as Attachments

• Mail messages may be comprised of simple text messages or binary messages, or a combination of both
• Any file that can not be represented as a series of ASCII characters can be considered binary data
• All pictures, sounds, or programs are examples of binary information
• All Internet mail clients can send and receive text messages
• However, many mail clients cannot handle binary data
  • e.g. programs which use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol -- see below) alone cannot transfer binary data
  • In some cases files must be manually encoded prior to transmittal
• To enable users to send and receive binary data another protocol, named MIME, was developed- advantage is that it's automatic
• MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions Sending Binary Binary Data
• The binary data is attached to the mail message
• It is not necessary for senders and receivers to use the same mail client or specifically encode the file, only that both support MIME
• Many mail clients do not support MIME

Compressing/encoding attachments

• Another way to send and receive binary data is to uuencode (or binhex) it into a text format, send it, and then uudecode (or un-binhex) it at the other end.
• To reduce the amount of data which is transferred via the Internet, the data should be compressed before mailing or ftping etc..
• See next Chapter on Compression (Chapter 5)

You may attach a file to be sent to the recipient. Click on next to the ``Attachments'' field. A Macintosh file chooser appears. Select the file to be attached and its name appears in the ``Attachments'' field.