Subject: How is "charset" in Content-Type determined?

From: Primoz Peterlin <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Jun 1996 09:07:10 GMT

Hello everybody --

Can someone please confirm me in the following problem...  If I receive an
email with MIME line "Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII" in its
header, and reply to it in an 8-bit character set (ISO Latin 2 in my case), the
outcoming message should be tagged with "Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN;
CHARSET=ISO-8859-2", not US-ASCII.  Correct?

My version of Pine (an admittedly ancient version, though -- 3.89) doesn't do
it -- it simply copies the Content-Type line from the message I reply to,
irrespective  of "character-set" line in my ~/.pinerc.  If you can assure me
that this bug has been fixed in the later versions, this might be a good reason
for upgrading Pine... :-)

Best regards, Primoz

--
Primoz Peterlin ([email-masked]) Fax:+386-61-131-5127
Institut za biofiziko MF, Lipiceva 2, SLO-1105 Ljubljana, Slovenija
          WWW page: http://sizif.mf.uni-lj.si/~peterlin/

---

From: Vladimír Solnický {Vladimir Solnicky} <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:57:04 +0200 (METDST)

> CHARSET=ISO-8859-2", not US-ASCII.  Correct?

I think not. At least versions 3.91-3.93 use Character set from your
.pinerc only if the message being sent out contains at least one character
with code > 127. This `optimalization' is done for two reasons:

1) If there is no char > 127, then US-ASCII label is true (and more
appropriate).

2) There is no reason to tag message containing no 8bit characters as
ISO-8859-2 making all recepients start apecial programs in case there are
no in the area using the mentioned character set.

By the way, your (?) WWW pages about ISO Latin 2 support are very nice.

Regards, V. S.

Vladimír Solnický, ÚTIA AV ČR, Pod vodárenskou věží 4,
182 08 Praha 8-Libeň, +42 2 6605/2364, telefax: +42 2 6884677,
[email-masked], http://www.utia.cas.cz/user_data/vs/vs-home-cz.html