
                                README.txt

This directory contains classes that specialize MIME++ for use in email.
While this may sound strange at first, remember that MIME is not
specifically an email message format.  There are really three main features
in MIME: (1) non-ASCII text, (2) compound documents (multipart messages),
and (3) content typing (MIME types).  One thing that MIME is silent on, is
how it should be used to structure email messages that contain attachments.
In fact, as Perl programmers like to say: "There's more than one way to do
it."  Thus, even though the MIME standard is very complete, there can still
be different, incompatible email message formats.

The classes in this directory can be used to simplify your use of MIME++
when used specifically for email.  The classes present a fairly simple
model of what an email message is.  Specifically, under this model an email
message contains:

  * an originator (From)

  * one or more recipients (To, Cc, Bcc)

  * a date

  * a subject

  * a memo text (the text that is displayed in the main window of an MUA)

  * zero or more attachments

Although the originator, recipients, date, and subject are fairly standard
in all email messages -- they're in the RFC 822 message header fields --
the memo text and the attachments require that you either know the formats
of specific MUAs (say, Outlook, Netscape, and Eudora), or that you have an
intelligent parser that can make intelligent guesses about these
components.  These classes try to combine both approaches.

These classes are also able to handle non-ASCII character sets in a
reasonably intelligent way.

These classes use the standard C++ library.  For the most part, you don't
have to deal with the MIME++ DwString class.

There are two different example programs that demonstrate the use of the
Email* classes.  The program in the file html_ex.cpp converts an email
message to an HTML file.  The program in the file create_ex.cpp creates
an email by adding an originator, recipients, and so on.  See the comments
in these files for more information.

