RE: Is there Unicode mail out there?

From: Jungshik Shin (jshin@mailaps.org)
Date: Thu Jul 12 2001 - 00:06:44 EDT


On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Ayers, Mike wrote:

> > From: Jungshik Shin [mailto:jshin@mailaps.org]
>
> > Nothing cryptic. As with others on this thread, your problem is
> > to mistake Windows-874 (legacy encoding for Thai) for UTF-8. Because
> > Windows-874 does NOT cover Chinese characters, they turned into
> > '?'. Judging from your message hader, you're not using MS OE
> > but something different.
>
> I am using OE, set to UTF-8. If I mail Chinese to myself, all is
> well.

  Sure. It should be in UTF-8 and all Chinese characters
(supported by Unicode and thus UTF-8) should be well and alive because
you're NOT replying to any message with the encoding other than UTF-8,
but you're just composing a message *anew* (as opposed to replying to
someone's mesg in an encoding other than UTF-8) and you configured MS
OE to use UTF-8 as the default encoding for outgoing messages.

> > > X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-874"
> > > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
> Odd. Perhaps our post office is changing things.

 Or, your version of MS OE (included in beta version of Windows XP)
might use a little bit different 'signature' than used by MS OE 5.x.

> > No, it should have been Windows-874 party !! :-).
> > Both Mark Davis and Peter Constable sent messages in Windows-874
> > beleiving that they're using UTF-8.
>
> Perhaps, like me, they sent messages in UTF-8 and had them converted
> to Windows-874 without consent. :-(

  Yes, it can be looked upon as that way.
As I wrote before (perhaps not so clearly as I wished) and Addison
explained well in what you quoted below, MS Outlook Express uses
the encoding of the message you're replying to (incoming message :
Windows-874) in your reply (i.e. outgoing message). In this
case, you were replying to Peter's message encoded in and labeled as
Windows-874. Therefore, the encoding of your outgoing message is set
to Windows-874 *regardless of* what you set as the default encoding for
your outgoing message(UTF-8 or whatever). Consequently when you added
some Chinese characters, they turned into '?' as there's no room for
Chinese characters in Windows-874.

> > However, I'm sending this in UTF-8 (after automatic conversion by
> > my mail client, Pine 4.33).

> I also received it as UTF-8.

  Pine doesn't do any trick, but just follows what I told it to :-).

> <Addison>
> I think you'll find that Peter's response applies to you too: the mailer is
> seeing Windows-874 on the incoming message and converting your outgoing
> message to use that same encoding (in a bid to be compatible with the
> original message). Outlook has done that for awhile. If you manually set the
> encoding for the reply you can override that behavior. In Outlook 2000 this
> is "Format | Encoding"....
> </Addison>

  That's also the case in MS OE 5.x. You can override this behavior
(using the same encoding for your reply as used by the mesage you're
replying to regardless of your configured default encoding) in 'Format |
Encoding' in the message composition window. In addition, when you go
to 'Format | Encoding' in the msg composition window, you can see what
encoding is being used for the message you're composing now. The bullet
point is to the left of the encoding used.

  BTW, what's strange is that you didn't get prompted when you
added some Chinese characters to your reply to Peter's message with Thai
characters encoded in Windows-874. My version of MS OE (5.50.4522.1200)
asks me to pick one of the following three options when I do that:

  - Send As Unicode: The msg will be sent as a Unicode message.
      All char. set info. will be retained....... some mail client
      may not be able to deal with Unicode msg........

  - Send As Is : The msg. will be sent as a regular email msg using
                 only the default char. set. Any text not in
                 the default char. set may be unreadable by the
                 receipient.

                (Note, in this case,
                 that it's not what you set as the default for
                 your outgoing message but the encoding of
                 the message you're replying to : Windows-874)

  - Cancel: return to.....

  If you (and Mark who uses a little bit old version
of MS OE : Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.3018.1300) had been prompted
this way, you would have picked the first option to avoid sending your
messages in Windows-874 (without your knowledge).

   Jungshik Shin



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Jul 12 2001 - 00:58:17 EDT