4.1. Introduction

4.1. Introduction
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A Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) type identifies the format of a file. The MIME type enables applications to read the file. Applications such as Internet browsers and email applications use the MIME type to handle files of different types. For example, an email application can use the MIME type to detect what type of file is in a file attached to an email.

In the GNOME desktop, the Nautilus file manager uses MIME types to identify the type of a file. The file manager needs to know the MIME type of a file to perform the following tasks:

Open the file in an appropriate application.
Display a string that describes the type of file.
Display an appropriate icon to represent the file.
Display a list of other applications that can open the file.

If you add a new application, you must ensure that other applications can recognize the files associated with the application. You must perform several tasks to enable other applications to detect the MIME type of the application files.

This section describes how applications detect the MIME types of files, and how applications are associated with MIME types. This chapter also describes the procedure that you must follow to add a new application.

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