LL-L: "Lowlands-L" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 14.MAY.1999 (04)

Sat May 15 00:29:15 UTC 1999

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 14.MAY.1999 (04) * ISSN 1089-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
 Posting Address: <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>
 Web Site: <http://www.geocities.com/~sassisch/rhahn/lowlands/>
 Users Manual: <http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html>
 A=Afrikaans, Ap=Appalachian, D=Dutch, E=English, F=Frisian,
 L=Limburgish, LS=Low Saxon (Low German), S=Scots, Sh=Shetlandic
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From: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Subject: Lowlands-L

> From: "Sandy Fleming" <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
>
>> Our good friend  +Fr Andreas Richard Turner writes:
>>
>> "Sorry to bother you off-list, but I am having some trouble with
>> reading the characters we are now supposed to be able to read. Do
>> you have some instruction to offer the list about how to set the
>> font in their e-mail programs so that we can read these non-US ASCII
>> characters?"
>
> I can't see special characters either, although I've had mail from
> other people with various kinds of formatting. Relevant details:
>
> I use Outlook 98 as a mailer, Windows 95 OS.
>
> The mails I'm getting from Lowlands-L are marked as plain text. The
> option to change to Rich Text Format is greyed in the menu for the
> mail item itself - it's functional on the reply/send window, but
> that's no use because that controls the type of text I send, not the
> type I receive.
>
> I've tried Emailing myself with special characters (and fonts &c) and
> it works fine. Here's a sample line cut and pasted from the Email -
> there should be a caret over the "e" in "special":
>
> Mail with spêcial characters.
>
> My conclusion is that text is being sent to me in plain text format
> from the list, so I don't see what I can do about that.
>
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at geocities.com>
> Subject: Lowlands-L
>
> Hi, Sandy!
>
> Obviously we are trying to cope with poor compatibility between
> programs. When I send stuff from the Netscape mailer, the choices of
> formats I get are "Plain Text Only," "Plain Text and HTML,"
> and "HTML Only."  By default it sends in plain text.  Once I start
> formating anything, it wants me to use one of the options with HTML.
> Rich Text is not an option.  I am not totally sure, but I assume that
> the archive wants plain text.  I noticed that in your submission you
> colored your name blue.  When I copied it into this issue it went to
> default black because my text is in plain text.  If I use the HTML
> option some people will only get gobbledigook.  So, please no HTML
> format submissions, folks!
>
> Anyway, "Plain Text" does not mean that you cannot use special
> characters. It only appears that there are differences in the way the
> various systems *handle* special characters.

It's my impression that the listserver is behaving correctly. I got
Sandy's e-circumflex fine, for instance (and so should you, since it's
reproduced above).

With luck, this should all shake down in a few days. However, here are
some pointers which people may find useful.

The key to the whole thing is in the MIME headers (to be found in your
full message headers if your mail software will show them to you).
The relevant ones, as sent by the LISTSERV in Ron's message of
Thu, 13 May 1999 15:11:37 -0700, and also in the one to which I am
replying:

  MIME-Version: 1.0
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
  Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

I.e. plain text (as Ron says), using the iso-8859-1 (also known as
iso-Latin1) character set, with 8-bit transmission. Contrast this with
an intervening mail from Ron Fri, 14 May 1999 09:18:07 -0700
where they were

  MIME-Version: 1.0
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
  Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

This will not work, since the charset is now US-ASCII and only 7 bits
are transmitted. The 7-bit limitation will do strange things
(e.g. an e-acute will be received as a plain "i"). I don't know why
the above switch took place; maybe the LISTSERV's configuration was
altered temporarily, maybe the messages were sent out by Ron with
different original charsets (Ron, you did mention I think that you seem
to have two "separated" accounts at geocities, or is it the University?).

As well as the LISTSERV behaving correctly, your mail transmissions also
need to go out with the correct MIME headers. Standard UNIX mailers such
as pine, elm etc allow this to be configured straightforwardly by the
user. So does Netscape Mail:

In Netscape, under Options/General Preferences/Fonts/Encoding choose
"Western (iso-8859-1)". Under Options/Mail and News Preferences/Compose
choose "Allow 8-bit" (NOT the MIME compliant quoted-printable option).
Then you should be fine. Different versions of Netscape may locate these
options under different headings.

I'm not familiar with Outlook Express nor Internet Explorer, so can't
offer hints for these; but I'm sure it must be possible to do the
equivalent.

Avoid RTF (Rich Text Format) which is not an Internet Mail Standard,
and which not everyone is equipped to cope with in mail. Ditto HTML,
and PDF (Adobe's portable Document Format).

So much for the transmission end. At the receiving end, if your mail
software is set up to recognise these MIME headers it should AUTOMATICALLY
display iso-8859-1 characters correctly. The chance of things being
changed along the line of transmission is nowadays very small.

You may need to make sure you have fonts available which are capable of
displaying the characters in the "upper half" of the iso-latin character
set encoding, but again this problem should not arise for most people
(especially if you can already see them).

There is one minor complication which affects mail sent by people who
compose it using MS Word or similar. I noticed that Ron's mailer seems
to do this. Some of you may have noticed a phrase of his which I saw
as "Roger, it didn’t come out right" in his mail of 11May (but not since).
The gap in "didn’t" turns out to be a character with numerical code 146,
which in the Microsoft Word encoding (Windows character set, not Mac
character set which is quite different, bless 'em) is an apostrophe.

Character codes 128-159 inclusive are not assigned characters in the
iso-latin charsets, which is why I saw blank. The codes 160-255 are used
for characters. The Microsoft Word for Windows charset coincides with
iso-latin-1 for codes 160-255, and assigns additional characters to most
of the codes in the range 128-159; these include language characters
S-hacek (138), OE-digraph (140), s-hacek (154), oe-digraph (156) and
Y-dieresis (159), as well as assorted punctutation and typographic
symbols (including Ron's apostrophe ... ). The characters {OE} and {oe}
find their place in the iso charsets iso-8859-10 (Nordic), the S-hacek
and s-hacek in iso-8859-2 (central european).

This complication should not arise if you make sure your mailer is
set up to use iso-latin-1 (=iso-8859-1), and do not compose mail using
MS-Word (or take care, if you do).

I hope this helps ...
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Date: 15-May-99                                       Time: 00:25:58

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