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Mail text

 

 

There are different ways how e-mails can be constructed. Common for all ways is, that the complete mail starts with a header, which includes the subject of the mail  the sender and other information. The real data of the e-mail following the header can be of different type:

 

plain text
HTML formatted text
Images, audio data, video data etc. in binary form

 

The header also can include some information, which describe the further construction of the current mail and the kind of the data.

 

This information is missing in the simplest case and the header is followed by a blank line and finally the text with the real message.
Complex e-mails are MIME-encoded (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). Such mails can consist of several areas which consist of header lines and other data again.

 

 

 

Parsing

 

With the IMP filter the texts of e-mails are analyzed, i.e. the texts are taken to pieces in accordance with their structure or syntax. Parsing is the technical term for this: the texts are parsed. A program which parses texts is a parser. The parsers can be made by the user with the TextTransformer. This program is a parser generator IDE (integrated Development environment). TextTransformer projects contain the specifications for parsers.