= Email Messages
:navtitle: Messages

An email message is essentially a simple text message that is communicated
from one party to another. It is no miracle that two unknown parties are
able to communicate; rather we can thank a set of standards that
allow any two unrelated systems to process an email even if the system owners
do not know each other.

The two most important standards upon which today's emails are based
are:

 * xref:messages/imf.adoc[Internet Mail Format] (IMF)
 * xref:messages/mime.adoc[Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions] (MIME)
