Subject: Pine and charset

From: [email-masked] (Heinz Diehl)
Date: 11 Mar 1997 14:24:05 +0100

Hi !

How can I tell Pine to use the ISO-8859-1 Charset and 8-Bit 
Encoding, instead of US-ASCII and 7 bits ??

"character-set=iso-8859-1" in .pinerc doesn't work, and
the manual can't tell me more than setting the "character-set"
option.

Greetinx, Heinz.
-- 
# Heinz Diehl, 68259 Mannheim, Germany
# PGP-encrypted mails welcome, key on request

---

From: "Alan J. Flavell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 15:31:39 GMT

> Encoding, instead of US-ASCII and 7 bits ??

For what purpose(s)?

If you are launching mail into a system that only guarantees 7-bit
integrity, it isn't a good idea to try to use straight 8-bit
characters. 

Look at the feature list of the version of PINE that you are using. 
Find the ones called enable-8bit-blah-blah.  If it hasn't got them, then
upgrade.  But if you're only talking to a 7-bit SMTP server, it still
won't be able to use 8-bit data, so PINE still may need to use QP
encoding to guarantee the integrity of your data.

---

From: Robin S Socha <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 16:26:36 +0100 (CET)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

  >> How can I tell Pine to use the ISO-8859-1 Charset and 8-Bit Encoding,
  >> instead of US-ASCII and 7 bits ??

  >integrity, it isn't a good idea to try to use straight 8-bit characters.

Sure, we all know that... But, there's Microsoft and wysiwyg and Netcrap
Mail and whatever else, and people are using them like they're using their
textprocessors and then Germans tend to get control characters instead of
äöü, etc. ... and that sucks :-) Though I don't actively use ISO-8859-1, I
have it set to avoid seeing what you're seeing in the line above.

So, Heinz, edit your .pinerc in the following way:

# Typical alternatives include ISO-8859-x, (x is a number between 1 and 9).
character-set=iso-8859-1

That's all.

Cheers,
Robin

- -----
Robin S. Socha,
Political Science Dept., Bonn University, Bonn

GMC d++ s+:+ a- C++ UL++$>+++ P+>++$ L++$>+++ E>+ W- N+ o@ !K-- w--- 
O M-- V-- PS--- PE+++ Y+ PGP++>+++ t+() 5-- !X R() tv++(+) b+++ DI++ 
D+(++) G++>+++ e++>+++ h r++>+++ y+**

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From: "Alan J. Flavell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 17:49:14 +0100 (MET)

>   >> instead of US-ASCII and 7 bits ??

You don't seem to have considered answering my question.  If you re-read
the original posting, I think you will be able to reach two conclusions:

1. Heinz wanted to send 8-bit characters over the 'net

2. Heinz had already discovered the character-set=iso-8859-1
parameter, whose purpose is clearly documented in the .pinerc
comments, and had discovered that it didn't control what is sent
out over the 'net.  Which is of course true.

> Sure, we all know that... 

      [eben nicht, wie es mir scheint...]

> But, there's Microsoft and wysiwyg and Netcrap
> äöü, etc. ... and that sucks :-) 

Yeah, yeah, now let's actually address the question, shall we?

> Though I don't actively use ISO-8859-1, I

What am I seeing in the line above???  Or rather, what do you imagine
I am seeing.  "control characters"?  _Which_ control characters, and 
why?

> # Typical alternatives include ISO-8859-x, (x is a number between 1 and 9).

He said he had already done that, and it doesn't affect what is sent to
the 'net.  And he is right, it really doesn't affect what is sent to the
'net.  Not for usenet news, and not for mail. 

> That's all.

         Wirklich?

As I said, I believe that enable-8bit-nntp-posting and
enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation are what the questioner is looking for. 
But they are only available in recent versions of PINE, _and_ they still
won't be useful if PINE is working to a 7-bit protocol mail server, in
which case it will still have to use quoted-printable encoding.

And please note:

# character-set should reflect the capabilities of the display you have.

The display that _you_ have, OK?  Not the capabilities of the mail
transfer agent, not the capabilities of the display that your
addressee has, but the capabilities of the display that _you_ have.

This parameter controls the way that the PINE client presents mail onto
_your_ terminal display.  Not how it encodes it for sending it over the
'net.

---

From: Robin S Socha <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 19:48:44 +0100 (CET)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

  >> You don't seem to have considered answering my question.  If you
  >> re-read the original posting, I think you will be able to reach two
  >> conclusions:

I repent. 

  Robin S. Socha	  | Bonner Talweg 56  | Tel:   +49 228 22217-8
  Political Science Dept. | 53113 Bonn        | Fax:   +49 228 22217-9
  Bonn University  	  | Germany           | email: [email-masked]

       On the package it said: "Requires MS Windows 3.11 or better"  
	       			      ...  so I got myself Linux.

---

From: [email-masked] (Robin D.H. Walker)
Date: 17 Mar 1997 18:23:11 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,

>_your_ terminal display.  Not how it encodes it for sending it over the

This would be a nice theory, but look at what the Help entry for
character-set says:

>The character set is used primarily to mark outgoing email appropriately.
>Set it to whatever character set you might use to compose messages.
>Whenever you actually send a message, Pine checks it to see if it is, in
>fact, US-ASCII (a subset of the other sets allowable). If it is US-ASCII,
>the outgoing message will be marked as such no matter what you have set as
>your character set. Normal default is US-ASCII.  Typical alternatives
>include ISO-8859-x, where x is a number between 1 and 9.

This clearly indicates that it affects the marking of outgoing mail.
It says nothing about the display of incoming mail on your display.
The situation for PC-Pine is more complicated, as the character-set
variable may affect translations:

>   In the case of PC-Pine, the character values cannot be passed through
>   to the display device unaltered since MS-DOS uses various non-standard
>   character sets called "Code Pages".
>
>   The mapping between DOS Code Page and standard character set is
>   controlled by the "character-set" variable in the PINERC file and the
>   PC's installed Code Page. PC-Pine will automatically map common
>   characters in IBM Code Pages 437, 850, 860, 863, and 865 to ISO-8859-1
>   and back when the PINERC has "character-set=ISO-8859-1". Pine will
>   also map common characters for IBM Code Page 866 to ISO-8859-5 and
>   back when "character-set=ISO-8859-5". The mappings are bi-directional,
>   and applied to all saved text attachments in the defined character
>   set, messages exported, etc.

Now, my particular problem is that I cannot get any of this to work
with OS/2 Pine (any version, including 3.95).  Even with character-set
set to ISO-8859-1, OS/2 Pine will not translate incoming e-mail from
ISO-8859-1 to CP850.  It seems to correctly translate outgoing e-mail
from CP850 to ISO-8859-1, however.

Does anyone understand what is going on, and how I can persuade OS/2
Pine to translate incoming e-mail correctly?
-- 
Robin Walker    (Network Admin), Queens' College, Cambridge, CB3 9ET, GB
[email-masked]                 Tel:+44 1223 335528   Fax:+44 1223 335566

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From: "Alan J. Flavell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 13:09:41 GMT

On Sun, 16 Mar 1997, Paul O Bartlett wrote:

>     Gentlemen, I answered the original question with suggestions for
> Pine settings.  

So you did.  However, thanks to the magic of usenet your answer hadn't
reached here at the time I suggested to look for the
enable-8bit-blah-blah options that you had already pointed out. 

> You're flogging a dead horse.

That's true.  (Not that this is the only time that a deceased equine
has ever been flagellated on usenet.)

I'm afraid I did get rather carried away when I saw the questioner being
advised to use the very option (Character-set) that he had already
pointed out didn't do what he wanted.  I apologise for the ferocity of
my reaction.

---

From: [email-masked] (Vladimir A. Pertsel)
Date: 18 Mar 1997 05:50:26 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Heinz Diehl) writes:
|> Hi !
|> 
|> How can I tell Pine to use the ISO-8859-1 Charset and 8-Bit 
|> Encoding, instead of US-ASCII and 7 bits ??
|> 
|> "character-set=iso-8859-1" in .pinerc doesn't work, and
|> the manual can't tell me more than setting the "character-set"
|> option.

It's definitely the common problem.
2/3 of the planet Earth population do not use the Latin alphabet.
I have taken the Russian patches and have applied them to 
the pine-3.95. That enables a new option 
        dont-encode-8bit-text-and-subject,
which should be turned on in the configuration file.

Look at:
ftp://mail.sagantec.co.il/pub/russian/pine-with-koi8.txt
Or get the patched sources
ftp://mail.sagantec.co.il/pub/russian/pine3.95.with-8-th-bit.tar.gz
or just pick the compiled source for some platforms from
ftp://mail.sagantec.co.il/pub/russian/

-- 
 From the Holy Land, with respect
 /\ /\   Vladimir A. Pertsel            S/W  engineer
((ovo))        E-mail:           \|/   Sagantec Israel
():::() [email-masked] (o o) tel.972-4-8572781
--PVA------------------------ooO-(_)-Ooo------------------ 
  an ancestor of mine by the name of Noah was once the 
 commanding admiral of the combined fleets of my planet.

---

From: "Alan J. Flavell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 19:01:21 GMT

> ># character-set should reflect the capabilities of the display you have.

That's what it says (in .pinerc), and I'd say it's true.

> >addressee has, but the capabilities of the display that _you_ have.

Now, here I certainly got carried away [embarrassed shuffling] and
you rightly call me to account for it.
..
> >  Not how it encodes it for sending it over the
> >'net.
> 

Actually [trying desperately to redeem himself] I think both statements
are true.  The character-set configuration is in effect a declaration of
the character-code that's used in your local environment, and this is
effective both for display of incoming messages and for creation of
outgoing messages.

PINE (the unix version, the one I'm familiar with) makes no attempt
to convert or adapt between different codes: if the incoming message
mis-matches the local setting then PINE will present an alert, but it
won't do anything to resolve the situation.  It's up to the reader to
select iso-2022-jp or koi8-r or whatever in their terminal environment 
if they want to see the message correctly.

> >your character set. 

This is indeed a useful feature.  Often (when reading mail composed with
some client other than PINE) I find myself being presented an alert that
the incoming message is in iso-irv-111 , iso-2022-kr or whatever, making
me nervous of what I'm about to see, when in fact the mail contains
nothing more than plain ascii.  However, this is an aside from the main
discussion... 

> This clearly indicates that it affects the marking of outgoing mail.

You are right...

> It says nothing about the display of incoming mail on your display.

It may not say it, but if you configure a character-set that does not
agree with what your terminal emulation is actually doing, then the 
incoming mail won't (in general) display correctly.

> variable may affect translations:

(and then you ask about OS/2 PINE)

This is an area that I'm unfamiliar with, so I'll resist the temptation
to pontificate. 

all the best!

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 16:31:34 -0500

On 15 Mar 1997, Alan J. Flavell wrote:

> >   [remainder omitted]

    Gentlemen, I answered the original question with suggestions for
Pine settings.  The questioner emailed me back that they worked just
fine and everything was OK.  You're flogging a dead horse.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

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From: [email-masked] (Andreas Prilop)
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 14:46:56 +0100

>Pine to translate incoming e-mail correctly?

You could do this with "mapping tables":
 <http://www.washington.edu/pine/tech-notes/low-level.html#char-set>

The package  pinetab2.zip
  <http://www.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/network.html>
  <http://www.simtel.net/simtel.net/msdos/mailnews.html>
includes many such mapping tables although none for cp850.
>From what you write, it might be a good idea to include also tables
"iso-8859-1 -> cp850" and "iso-8859-1 <- cp850".
According to the Pine manual, that would be unnecessary because they
claim that Pine for MS-DOS and OS/2 will do such a translation
without special tables.

Andreas