-<code class="literal">mime.types</code> file, which contains the mapping of file extensions to
-IANA MIME types. The other is the <code class="literal">mailcap</code> file, which specifies
-the external commands to use for handling specific MIME types.
-</p><div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="using-mime"></a>1. Using MIME in Mutt</h2></div></div></div><p>
-There are three areas/menus in Mutt which deal with MIME, they are the
-pager (while viewing a message), the attachment menu and the compose
-menu.
-</p><div class="sect2" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="id473793"></a>1.1. Viewing MIME messages in the pager</h3></div></div></div><p>
+<code class="literal">mime.types</code> file, which contains the mapping of file
+extensions to IANA MIME types. The other is the
+<code class="literal">mailcap</code> file, which specifies the external commands
+to use for handling specific MIME types.
+</p><div class="sect1" title="1. Using MIME in Mutt"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="using-mime"></a>1. Using MIME in Mutt</h2></div></div></div><div class="sect2" title="1.1. MIME Overview"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="mime-overview"></a>1.1. MIME Overview</h3></div></div></div><p>
+MIME is short for <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension</span>”</span>
+and describes mechanisms to internationalize and structure mail
+messages. Before the introduction of MIME, messages had a single text
+part and were limited to us-ascii header and content. With MIME,
+messages can have attachments (and even attachments which itself have
+attachments and thus form a tree structure), nearly arbitrary characters
+can be used for sender names, recipients and subjects.
+</p><p>
+Besides the handling of non-ascii characters in message headers, to Mutt
+the most important aspect of MIME are so-called MIME types. These are
+constructed using a <span class="emphasis"><em>major</em></span> and
+<span class="emphasis"><em>minor</em></span> type separated by a forward slash. These
+specify details about the content that follows. Based upon these, Mutt
+decides how to handle this part. The most popular major type is
+<span class="quote">“<span class="quote"><code class="literal">text</code></span>”</span> with minor types for plain text,
+HTML and various other formats. Major types also exist for images,
+audio, video and of course general application data (e.g. to separate
+cryptographically signed data with a signature, send office documents,
+and in general arbitrary binary data). There's also the
+<code class="literal">multipart</code> major type which represents the root of a
+subtree of MIME parts. A list of supported MIME types can be found in
+<a class="xref" href="mimesupport.html#supported-mime-types" title="Table 5.1. Supported MIME types">Table 5.1, “Supported MIME types”</a>.
+</p><p>
+MIME also defines a set of encoding schemes for transporting MIME
+content over the network: <code class="literal">7bit</code>,
+<code class="literal">8bit</code>, <code class="literal">quoted-printable</code>,
+<code class="literal">base64</code> and <code class="literal">binary</code>. There're some
+rules when to choose what for encoding headers and/or body (if needed),
+and Mutt will in general make a good choice.
+</p><p>
+Mutt does most of MIME encoding/decoding behind the scenes to form
+messages conforming to MIME on the sending side. On reception, it can be
+flexibly configured as to how what MIME structure is displayed (and if
+it's displayed): these decisions are based on the content's MIME type.
+There are three areas/menus in dealing with MIME: the pager (while
+viewing a message), the attachment menu and the compose menu.
+</p></div><div class="sect2" title="1.2. Viewing MIME Messages in the Pager"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a id="mime-pager"></a>1.2. Viewing MIME Messages in the Pager</h3></div></div></div><p>
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