Character Set Problems with List

[Koontz John E]

Is anyone other than the folks at KU receiving messages from the list
(some or all) that are converted to attachments, with the message replaced
by a text that starts out "This message uses a character set that is not
supported by the Internet Service."?

Is anyone noticing it occurring with postings from anyone other than David
Rood or myself?  Does it occur always with postings from us, or only
sometimes?

I am presently under the impression that this occurs when a Microsoft
Exchange email server receives a message in a character set it hasn't been
configured to believe supported, e.g., iso-8859-1.  I believe the Exchange
mail server can be told not to do this, by adding additional code pages,
but I haven't yet verified this.  The problem seems to be exacerbated by
particular users' sending email programs, e.g., maybe pine, which seems to
be especially solicitous about preserving such settings in included
messages.

This problem is different from a simple warning displayed at the top of
mail that the character set being used in the mail is, e.g., iso-8859-1,
and that you are actually using a different set.  It is also different
from problems due to email having been encoded wholly or partially in
HTML, which also causes some mail programs to present the message as an
attachment.  In those cases the message is sometimes displayed in
unformatted text, too.  I would discourage use of HTML in letters posted
to the list for that reason, though nobody's actually complained about it
(recently) and it doesn't seem to be a big problem.

JEK