% This document is largely a stub used to allow the email package docs
% to be formatted separately from the rest of the Python
% documentation.  This allows the documentation to be released
% independently of the rest of Python since the email package is being
% maintained for multiple Python versions, and on an accelerated
% schedule.

\documentclass{howto}

\title{email Package Reference}
\author{Barry Warsaw}
\authoraddress{\email{barry@zope.com}}

\date{\today}
\release{2.4.2}			% software release, not documentation
\setreleaseinfo{}		% empty for final release
\setshortversion{2.4}		% major.minor only for software

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
  The \module{email} package provides classes and utilities to create,
  parse, generate, and modify email messages, conforming to all the
  relevant email and MIME related RFCs.
\end{abstract}

% The ugly "%begin{latexonly}" pseudo-environment supresses the table
% of contents for HTML generation.
%
%begin{latexonly}
\tableofcontents
%end{latexonly}

\section{Introduction}
The \module{email} package provides classes and utilities to create,
parse, generate, and modify email messages, conforming to all the
relevant email and MIME related RFCs.

This document describes the current version of the \module{email}
package, which is available to Python programmers in a number of ways.
Python 2.2.2 and 2.3 come with \module{email} version 2, while earlier
versions of Python 2.2.x come with \module{email} version 1.  Python
2.1.x and earlier do not come with any version of the \module{email}
package.

The \module{email} package is also available as a standalone distutils
package, and is compatible with Python 2.1.3 and beyond.  Thus, if
you're using Python 2.1.3 you can download the standalone package and
install it in your \file{site-packages} directory.  The standalone
\module{email} package is available on the
\ulink{SourceForge \module{mimelib} project}{http://mimelib.sf.net}.

The documentation that follows was written for the Python project, so
if you're reading this as part of the standalone \module{email}
package documentation, there are a few notes to be aware of:

\begin{itemize}
\item Deprecation and ``version added'' notes are relative to the
      Python version a feature was added or deprecated.  To find out
      what version of the \module{email} package a particular item was
      added, changed, or removed, refer to the package's
      \ulink{\file{NEWS} file}{http://cvs.sf.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/mimelib/mimelib/NEWS?rev=1.36&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup}.

\item The code samples are written with Python 2.2 in mind.  For
      Python 2.1.3, some adjustments are necessary.  For example, this
      code snippet;

      \begin{verbatim}
      if isinstance(s, str):
          # ...
      \end{verbatim}

      would need to be written this way in Python 2.1.3:

      \begin{verbatim}
      from types import StringType
      # ...
      if isinstance(s, StringType):
          # ...
      \end{verbatim}

\item If you're reading this documentation as part of the
      standalone \module{email} package, some of the internal links to
      other sections of the Python standard library may not resolve.

\end{itemize}

\input{email}

\end{document}
