****
**** MIME-parser-1.7 has been uploaded to the CPAN under my author
**** id (ERYQ) and name (Eryq).
****

NAME

    MIME-parser - family of MIME:: modules for parsing MIME messages

ALPHA-RELEASE WARNING

    THIS CODE IS IN AN EVALUATION PHASE UNTIL 1 AUGUST 1996.
    Depending on any comments/complaints received before this cutoff 
    date, the interface *may* change in a non-backwards-compatible 
    manner.

DESCRIPTION

    MIME-parser is a collection of Perl5 MIME:: modules for parsing 
    and decoding single- or multipart (even nested multipart) MIME 
    messages. 

SYNOPSIS

    You start by creating an instance of MIME::Parser, and setting up
    certain parsing parameters: what directory to save extracted files 
    to, how to name the files, etc.

    You then give that instance a readable filehandle on which waits a
    MIME message.  If all goes well, you will get back a MIME::Entity
    object, consisting of a MIME::Head (which holds the MIME header 
    data) and the name of the file in which the (decoded) body has been 
    stored.

    If the original message was a multipart document, the MIME::Entity
    object will have a non-empty list of "parts", each of which is in 
    turn a MIME::Entity (which might also be a multipart entity, etc, 
    etc...).

    Internally, MIME::Parser asks for instances of MIME::Decoder
    whenever it needs to decode an encoded file.  MIME::Decoder has
    a mapping from supported encodings (e.g., 'base64') to classes
    whose instances can decode them.  You can add to this mapping 
    to try out new/experiment encodings.  You can also use 
    MIME::Decoder by itself.

MODULE SPECIFICATIONS

    Module      DSLI    Description                               Info
    ----------  ----    ----------------------------------------  ----
    MIME::
    ::Decoder   adpO    OO interface for decoding MIME messages   ERYQ
    ::Entity    adpO    An extracted and decoded MIME entity      ERYQ
    ::Head      adpO    A parsed MIME header                      ERYQ
    ::Parser    adpO    Parses streams to create MIME entities    ERYQ

CONTENTS OF THE PACKAGE

    ./MIME/*.pm         the MIME-parser classes
    ./Makefile          the distribution makefile
    ./COPYING           terms and conditions for copying/using the software
    ./README            this file
    ./docs/             HTMLized documentation
    ./etc/              convenient copies of other modules you'll need
    ./testin/           files you can use for testing (as in "make test")
    ./testout/          the output of "make test"

REQUIREMENTS

    Obtain and install the following modules from the CPAN:

         MIME::QuotedPrint 
         MIME::Base64

    For your convenience, possibly-old copies are provided in the ./etc
    directory, of the distribution, but they are NOT installed for you 
    during the installation procedure.

INSTALLATION

    1. Gunzip and de-tar the distribution.

    2. Edit the Makefile (mostly, to tell it where to put the new modules).
 
    3. Issue the following commands:
 
          make test
          make install
 
CHANGE LOG
	1.8.	Fixed incompatibility with 5.001 and FileHandle::new_tmpfile
		Added COPYING file, and improved README.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

    Copyright (c) 1996 by Eryq.  All rights reserved.  This program is free
    software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
    Perl itself. 

    See the COPYING file in the dsitribution for details.

SEE ALSO

    The MIME format is documented in RFC 1521.  
    The MIME header format is documented in RFC 822.

AUTHOR

    Eryq, eryq@rhine.gsfc.nasa.gov
    28 April 1996

