[dev] [cvs] commit: imp/docs CHANGES imp/lib base.php framework/MIME/MIME Structure.php imp/config conf.xml

[Jan Schneider]

Zitat von Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:

> Quoting Jan Schneider <jan at horde.org>:
>
>> Zitat von Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:
>>
>>> slusarz     2006-03-20 23:55:37 PST
>>>
>>>   Modified files:
>>>     docs                 CHANGES
>>>     lib                  base.php
>>>     MIME/MIME            Structure.php
>>>     config               conf.xml
>>>   Log:
>>>   Bug: 2702
>>>   Allow admin to specify local default character set to use for
>>> broken messages
>>>   without charset information.
>>
>> This has to be a preference like in any other email client.
>
> I debated putting this in the preferences, but this is really not
> something an end-user should normally be dealing with.  This is why
> there are several sentences of explanations on what this is good for
> in the config file - this would not transfer over as well to the
> preferences (sure we could put it in a help entry, but we all honestly
> know how few people read a help entry). In fact, this setting will
> probably break more messages than it enables to be shown "correctly".

I don't agree. You give the most important reason against this  
yourself below. People using the same Horde don't have to use the same  
preferred language/charset. I'm curious why you think this will break  
messages. AFAICS only messages that we currently handle as ascii  
message because they don't provide any charset are affected. If they  
are really ascii messages, nothing happens. If they are not in the  
users' preferred charset, the worst that could happen is that they  
still can't read it.

I agree we should not make this a free form field, but a select box  
with the (well selected) charset list we use for sending messages.

> And if we put this in the preferences, then we really need to default
> this to not only blank (i.e. RFC compliant = 'us-ascii') but I also
> feel very strongly we need to have this locked by default.  Since I
> don't think we have any other preferences locked by default, it seemed
> like this would be better placed in the admin config.  Obviously I can
> see the advantages of a preference (not everyone on a single
> installation necessary shares the same language preferences, for
> example), but then again this is a tremendous hack for people who
> really don't understand (or are not willing to listen to the
> explanation of) why these malformed messages should not be displayed
> properly.  (sidenote: I still personally don't understand why people
> complain about this when 99%+ of this malformed messages are spam in
> the first place!)

That's not always true. Probably 99% of these messages I get are spam.  
But I filter out most of them, which leaves about 50% that finally  
reach my inbox. The other 50% are almost always newsletters that tend  
to be sent with the same kind of broken software like spam messages.
I'm pretty sure this has something to do with where you live. If 99%  
of the messages you get that are not spam, are written in English, you  
won't even notice that this is a problem at all. It already worse for  
us Western-Europeans who recieve most of their messages in  
iso-8859-1(5). But at least we can still read the broken message  
because they consist of 75-95% ascii characters. Now move further east  
and you are completely lost. Because you have no chance to read EUC,  
ShiftJS, or Big5 messages that are sent as ascii.

Jan.

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