[imp] Message-Display ignores MIME charset

[Otto Stolz]

Hello,

apparently, my message did not make it to <imp@lists.horde.org>,
the other day; so here is my 2nd attempt. Apolgies to
eveybody who sees this message twice.


In our shop (a university), e-mail arrives from virtually
everywhere on this planet (no extra-terrestric senders
observed, so far :-) ), in every conceivable encoding.
This should pose no problem, if the messages are correctly
MIME labelled (cf. example, below), and the respective ad-
dressee has suitable fonts installed.

Now, IMP (which we are currently testing) apparently does
ignore the MIME charset label: for the display, IMP undoes
the content-transfer-encoding, but it tells the browser
that the text be in ISO 8859-1 encoding. So IMP effectively
transfers bits rather than characters, cf. example below.
This means also, that neither the Euro symbol (our currency
from 2002-01-01 on) nor Sorbian (one of Germany's official
languages) can be displayed, as ISO 8859-1 lacks the required
characters.

The only way to display non-ISO-8859-1 messages I found so far:
1. display message source, and note the charset from the MIME
   headers;
2. focus message frame;
3. invoke browser's "Open Frame in New Window" function;
4. change browser's character coding according to the note
   taken in step 1. This will render the message readable,
   but at the same time spoil the surrounding menu items,
   as they are coded in ISO 8859-1.
I am not desiring to teach this method to my users.

My config:
  SunOS 5.8 
  Apache 1.3.20
  PHP 4.0.6
  Horde 1.2.6
  IMP 2.2.6

I could not find any hint on this problem in the Horde
administrator's FAQ, nor in the documentation that comes
with Horde and Imp.
- The imp/config/lang.php3 file contains no comments;
  I guess it lists the various translations of the user-
  interface, which really has no relation to the
  message content.
- The /imp/config/mime.php3 file is apparently meant
  to configure the display of attachments, but not
  of the message body proper.

So, what can I do to get the display working for correctly
labelled messages?

Thank you in advance for any hints.

Best wishes,
  Otto Stolz


--- Example: Message source (most heaeders dropped for brevity)  ---

MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=UTF-8
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable

=E1=BE=BD=CE=95=CE=BD =E1=BC=80=CF=81=CF=87=E1=BF=87 =E1=BC=A6=CE=BD
=E1=BD=
=81 =CE=9B=E1=BD=B9=CE=B3=CE=BF=CF=82.

=D0=AF =D0=B3=D0=BE=D0=B2=D0=BE=D1=80=D1=8E
=D0=A0=D1=83=D1=81=D0=BA=D0=B8=
=D0=B9 =D1=8F=D0=B7=D1=8B=D0=BA =D0=BE=D1=87=D0=B5=D0=BD
=D0=BF=D0=BB=D0=BE=
=D1=85=D0=BE.

Ich zahle bald mit =E2=82=AC
und spiele gerne =E7=A2=81.

Gru=C3=9F & so,
   dein O

--- Example: Imp display --

᾽Εν ἀ�χῇ ἦν � Λόγος.

  Я говорю Ру�кий �зык очен плохо.

  Ich zahle bald mit €
  und spiele gerne �.

  Gruß & so,
     dein O

--- Example: description of correct display ---

The message (as displayed by any Unicode-capable
POP, or IMAP, client) comprises:
- one line in Greek (Joh. 1, 1),
- one line in Russian (I speek Russian rather badly),
- the Euro currency symbol,
- one Japanese Kanji character (Go, the renowned game),
- some text in German (ISO 8859-1).

(This is an extreme example, I know; I made it up for
test purposes. However, the underlying problem is very
real!)