[Tickets #10148] Re: Incorrect message charset in replies with reply_headers

[bugs at horde.org]

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. THIS EMAIL ADDRESS IS NOT MONITORED.

Ticket URL: http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/10148
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  Ticket             | 10148
  Updated By         | je at ktf.rtu.lv
  Summary            | Incorrect message charset in replies with reply_headers
  Queue              | IMP
  Version            | Git master
  Type               | Bug
  State              | Resolved
  Priority           | 2. Medium
  Milestone          |
  Patch              |
  Owners             | Michael Slusarz
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je at ktf.rtu.lv (2011-09-01 19:21) wrote:

>> it is clear the only a half of the problem is solved - It is very
>> likely that headers can contain US-ASCII only (and - as the results -
>> relpy in 8859-1) characters only, while the the reply message BODY
>> requires UTF8.
>
> And this is completely expected.  And this has already been  
> discussed (not sure if it was this thread).  Again: for replies, we  
> send the message in the charset that the original sender sent (as  
> long as the original sender sent in non-ASCII).  That is because  
> this is the only charset we know for sure the sender can handle.

yes, you are right but just for some part of the problem.

Today the recurrent round of encoding war among Latvian IT specialists  
ended which began as usual - one sent UTF8 encoded message on which  
reply was made using client which for some damned legacy reasons  
analyses the message and decides what encoding to use and due to the  
fact that neither Subject no reply body text contained chars with  
vowels, the client demoted encoding to ISO8859-1 ("the best one  
everyone can read" ). On that message  I replayed using chars with  
vowels. The result was ordinary unreadable email in iso8859-1 with a  
lot of question marks (as horde keeps encodind from original) with  
following investigation on "who is ass among us". Therefore I made the  
correction in Compose.php to have UTF8 ALLWAYS ON assuming that the  
time of UTF8 incapable clients is long time gone and such should not  
be honoured.

On the care for mental health of those who do not know what the  
encoding means - I suggest one step further - remove prom preferences  
any mention of encoding to make no confusion at all.

By the way, even my mom (71)  knows what the encoding is; at least -  
what effect is has on e-mails. So the problem lies within basic  
computer literacy and not the encodings. Even browsers have a lot of  
available encodings and users - at least in Baltic countries - know  
how to use them to get the problematic page readable.

> Conversely, whether or not I know about charsets is important because
> I, as a user, **must proactively make a decision** using this  
> information at compose time.  And if I use my non-existent/incorrect  
> knowledge, there is a good chance I could break the outgoing e-mail  
> since the chosen charset may not support the characters I have  
> placed in the body.

IMP4 had such option and i do not remeber protests from horde  
deplyoers in horde/imp mailin list about users going insane seeing the  
encoding option. Yes, using that control it was possible to break  
outgoing email, but without it  you do not give the possibility for  
the user to make a correction to it if it is desperately necessary.  
What solution do you offer for such cases? Start to write a new letter  
and copy/paste the text on which one is replying after reception of  
the letter having "What that means?!!!" as the main text of the body?

Janis