LL-L "Technica" 2009.02.11 (03) [E]

Wed Feb 11 21:50:11 UTC 2009

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L O W L A N D S - L - 11 February 2009 - Volume 02
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Technica

Folks,

Susan Smith of LINGUIST kindly investigated the character encoding matter.
Please find a copy of her message below.

There is a possibility that all that needs to happen is for me to change the
encoding mode when I send (bundled) postings to the Listserv. I have
specified Unicode (UTF-8) for outgoing mail in Gmail, and this is what the
"instructions" say:
Sending with UTF-8 encoding

Each time you send a message, Gmail automatically selects an appropriate
encoding for the language(s) in which you've composed your mail. It's
possible, however, that the recipient may not be able to properly view the
message you've sent.

If your contacts are having trouble viewing messages you've sent them, we
recommend using 'UTF-8' (Unicode) for all outgoing mail. UTF-8 is a standard
encoding that's accepted by many email clients.

On the basis of this and Susan's information, are any of you able to come up
with a solution, including simple instructions for subscribers if required?

Thanks for thinking about it and for your support in general.

Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

***

Hi Ron,
It seems that this problem is probably due to something outside our control
- we haven't made any changes to the character encoding we're using for
Listserv, and our other lists are fine.  Apparently, the way a message is
encoded can be changed at several different points - when it is sent, when
it passes through different mail servers, and when it is received.  Some
mail programs let you pick settings for both how you send your messages and
how you receive them.  From what Luc said about how his character transfer
encoding setting was changing so frequently, it might be some kind of change
his email provider was making, maybe testing out some different formats.  He
could try contacting them.  He could also try changing the settings in his
mail client, if it has those options.  Thunderbird lets me pick what
encoding I view a message with.

As I've been reading up on this topic, the character transfer encoding
controls how various character encodings are translated, and if you don't
specify what you want, the mail server may apply some default setting.  This
can also mix things up.  I found this page which illustrates the complexity
of the issue:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/A97336_01/new.102/a86653/ch23.htm

The messages you've sent me from the list look fine in with Western
ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 encoding, but they get the same broken characters as I
can see in the web archives when I switch to Windows 1251 (the web archives
look ok though when I follow the directions you've put at the top, to view
as html and switch to UTF-8).  Some of the other options I have, like
Turkish ISO-8859-9, also result in broken characters.  How do messages that
people post interact with this gmail address, if at all?  It looks like they
are just posting directly to the list, like normal, but I wanted to check.
 The encoding problems in the archives must be a result of the encoding with
which people are sending them, or something that is happening en-route, but
they don't seem to be related to Listerv, as I said earlier.  Maybe you
could ask your subscribers to check all their mail settings and ensure that
they are sending (and reading) messages in UTF-8?

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful - this character encoding problem is quite
hard to pin down, it turns out, because of all the many points along an
email's path where it can be affected.  If I figure anything else out about
this, though, I'll let you know.

Best,
Susan

•

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