Re: CHAT: Multi-Lingos

> Date:         Tue, 22 Aug 2000 04:33:18 GMT
> From:         Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>
> >From: Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...>
> >Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 21:42:23 -0000
> >will you please kick your mail program in the head until it either
> >starts sending US-ASCII only, or puts in a proper charset definition
> >(i.e., UTF-8) in the header?
> Sure, how do I do that? I'm sorry for all the abuse of special characters,
> but sometimes I have no choice but use them.
I now know much more than I wanted to about web mailers. I tested
HotMail, Yahoo, ColorMail (run by freemessage --- aka easemail, aka
...), and finally MailAndNews. (All .com, except yahoo.dk).

Most of them think that your browser sends them ASCII or Latin-1.
However, unless the compose mail form is explicitly sent as Latin-1,
your browser will send whatever you have selected as your default
viewing character set. In Netscape you can set this by selecting
View/Character Set/Western (ISO 8859-1) .

The only one I found that specified the charset for composing mail,
preventing people from sending Russian or UTF-8, was yahoo.dk --- I
assume that all Yahoo web mail services do it.

Only Yahoo and MailAndNews put a charset parameter in the Content-Type
header --- and if you send UTF-8 to MailAndNews, they lie and say it's
iso-8859-1 anyway.

Last I tried non-ASCII in the Subject line, which can break old
mailers most horribly. Only MailAndNews did the correct escaping here.

So --- Oskar's choices are: Set the browser default charset to
iso-8859-1 and stay with HotMail, or switch to Yahoo --- but keep to
ASCII in the subject line in both cases. Or set the charset and switch
to MailAndNews, and use Latin-1 to your hearts content.

----------------------------------------

Now that we're talking charsets. PC users, remember to keep away from
the Windows-specific extension characters. (This is not aimed at Oskar
--- in fact noone's doing it right now, but it used to be a problem).

I'm not on a PC myself, so I can't show the ones I mean --- and they
shouldn't go in email anyway --- but for reference, here is the
complete Latin-1 repertoire (ASCII is the first half):

      ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
    @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
    ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~

      ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ­ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿
    À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß
    à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ

If you don't see it here, anyone on a non-Windows system will be
unable to see it if you use it in list mail.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)