What's a Generic MIME type?

[aceO07]

I'm creating an email program that has attachments, however I don't understand the MIME system that well. I will provide types of zip/doc/text/xls and a few other basic ones. However, I don't want to have to give a MIME type for every file. What's a generic MIME type?

 

[tcsenter]

Everything you ever wanted to know about MIME but were afraid to ask:

The MIME Information Page

FAQs.org MIME FAQ

MIME MIMEEE!

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

A generic MIME type, I assume, would be the default for files that don't match any other MIME types. Depending on what you set it to, the file will be treated different ways. For example on a webserver if you set the default MIME type to binary/octet-stream or whatever it is, browsers will prompt to download. If you set it to text/plain, they'll display it as plain text in the browser, even if it really is a jpeg or a zip file or whatever.