About MIME types

MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) is a standard protocol for identifying the data type of a file and therefore the application that ought to be used to display or edit it.

MIME Type is a property of document and annotation objects. A document MIME type can be different from the MIME types of the document's content elements. This is useful if the document has multiple content elements with different MIME types and your application requires a single MIME type for the document object.

Documents and annotations with content have a MIME Type property that is determined automatically from the content types (ContentType property) of the object's content elements, using this logic:

NOTE  The Content Type of a Content Reference object plays no role in determining the MIME Type of its owning document, as these are two different properties.

Enterprise Manager displays the MIME type of:

Clients should specify MIME type whenever possible as mapping extensions to MIME types is not an exact science. Doing so also saves the overhead of Content Engine-initiated registry lookup.

If you do not specify a value for MIME Type on the checked out document, the value of the Content Type property of the first content element will be used as the MIME type. Similarly, the value of the Content Type property for a Content Reference will be used if a MIME Type is not specified.