Subject: Charsets, Pine for Unix, and Unicode

From: Bob Rasmussen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 10:32:30 -0700 (PDT)

Has anyone done any work on making Pine (for Unix) convert received messages
to Unicode UTF-8 for display? Then, when running Pine through a UTF-8 capable
terminal session, users could receive messages in a wide variety of charsets
and have them displayed properly (without warning messages). For comparison, I
just found out the Lynx (Unix text-based web browser) has this ability.

-- 
Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: [email-masked]
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          voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
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            web: http://www.anzio.com         

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From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 03:24:19 -0500 (CDT)

On 08/02/00, at 10:32am -0700, Bob Rasmussen <[email-masked]> wrote:

>to Unicode UTF-8 for display?

Why does pine need a built-in feature for this utility? I suppose you could use
display-filter to pipe messages to a utility for conversion to another
character set, though it would probably be easier to do this with a procmail
recipie.

>For comparison, I just found out the Lynx (Unix text-based web browser) has
>this ability.

It's debateable whether it's a good idea to add so many features to Lynx, which
isn't as quick as it once was.

---

From: Bob Rasmussen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 09:41:05 -0700 (PDT)

> character set, though it would probably be easier to do this with a procmail

1. I am unaware of a general purpose character translation utility that
supports UTF-8.
2. Display of message header information, such as sender's name, need to be
integrated into Pine.
3. Not everyone speaks English.
4. Setting up procmail is not an option for vast numbers of Pine users, either
for reasons of technical ability or for lack of shell access.
5. Display of all-ASCII messages would not be slowed at all.

---

From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 12:13:45 -0500 (CDT)

>>>Has anyone done any work on making Pine (for Unix) convert received
>>>messages to Unicode UTF-8 for display?

>>Why does pine need a built-in feature for this utility? I suppose you could
>>use display-filter to pipe messages to a utility for conversion to another

>5. Display of all-ASCII messages would not be slowed at all.

Do not Cc list members when replying; it's annoying.

1. If there's a need for the utility, perhaps you should volunteer and
contribute it to the community.

2. Irrelevant; headers MUST be 7 bit characters, remember? They wouldn't be
translated.

3. So what? Pine is a Mail client. Proper display of a character set is the
duty of the terminal. Conversion of messages to another character set is not
the duty of a Mail client. As I pointed out, Pine has "display filters" feature
that could work with a utility to do this.

4. Lack of ability is their problem. If the system administrator feels that
character set conversion is in the best interest of a lot of his users, than,
yes, he should set this up for them. That would be his job.

5. So what?

---

From: Bob Rasmussen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 10:57:50 -0700 (PDT)

Thank you for your charming response. See below.

On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

> ... 

I've always wished Pine had an easy way to respond to the list and not the
sender. Perhaps you should volunteer and contribute that feature to the
community.

> contribute it to the community.

I'd rather not reinvent the proverbial wheel, if it's out ther already.

> 2. Irrelevant; headers MUST be 7 bit characters, remember? They wouldn't be

But the header MAY contain a charset identifier, which may not match the
user's charset, so currently Pine will display it incorrectly.

> duty of the terminal. 

Absurd. 

> Conversion of messages to another character set is not

Actually, that is helpful. I'll look into it.

> yes, he should set this up for them. That would be his job.

Let me guess, you're in customer support, right?

Consider the case of a Chinese-speaking student at an American university. The
student wants to read mail from home. The university has provided a Pine email
account. The sysadmin speaks only English, and knows nothing of foreign
character sets. Now which is the best solution:

1. The student tries to convince the sysadmin there is a problem.
2. The student (an English major) writes a character-set translation program
in Unix, and attaches it to the display-filter.
3. The student is shown how to change the display charset from US-ASCII to
UTF-8 (as in Lynx), and can now read Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian,
Hebrew, ...

---

From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 13:36:31 -0500 (CDT)

>Thank you for your charming response. See below.

Why, the numbered response, which didn't address what I said, sure indicated
what your attitude was. You're welcome.

>>>4. Setting up procmail is not an option for vast numbers of Pine users,
>>>either for reasons of technical ability or for lack of shell access.

>sender. Perhaps you should volunteer and contribute that feature to the

That's right, it's the Mail client's fault for making you do something wrong.
It's not your responsibility to observe what is happening.

>I'd rather not reinvent the proverbial wheel, if it's out ther already.

You're complaining that it's not a Pine feature, but you haven't looked for it
yourself to use with Pine.

>user's charset, so currently Pine will display it incorrectly.

False; Pine passes the characters along just fine. It's up to the TERMINAL
settings to present the characters as intended.

>Absurd.

Nothing anyone says will shake you of that, right? You know best.

>UTF-8 (as in Lynx), and can now read Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian,

None. The student looks for, and finds, a terminal emulation that meets his
needs. It's his computer, right?

If he's using a public terminal, then, yes, he requests the feature from the
system adminstrator, helpfully providing the name of the correct application if
it's not currently part of the Unix distribution in use.

This very same student could be at a school that doesn't use Pine as a default
Mail client on public terminals.

With respect to Lynx, the terminal still has to be capable of displaying those
characters! If I'm using a text terminal emulation on a DOS comm program with
an amber text monitor, I'm going to see garbage.

---

From: Satya <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 00:39:15 +0530 (IST)

>sender. Perhaps you should volunteer and contribute that feature to the

Suggestion: use the List-Post header.

    [ Note: This message contains email list management information ]

>user's charset, so currently Pine will display it incorrectly.

Based on the charset header, an attempt can be made to use a proper
filter, or tell the terminal.

>> 3. So what? Pine is a Mail client. Proper display of a character set is the

On *nix, that is not absurd in the least.

-- 
Satya. <URL:http://satya.virtualave.net/>
US-bound grad students! For pre-apps, see <URL:http://quickapps.cjb.net/>
All generalizations are false, including this one.

---

From: Frank Tobin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 14:52:55 -0500 (CDT)

>     [ Note: This message contains email list management information ]

Problem: this only applies to composing new messages, and it is out of the
way for users to use well.

The proper way to handle this is for the user to list someplace the
addresses of mailing lists he is on, and if a messages comes in with one
of those addresses in the To: or CC: fields, the user has the option of
replying solely to the list after hitting "Reply".

This is how mutt handles the situation.

- -- 
Frank Tobin		http://www.uiuc.edu/~ftobin/

---

From: Lynn Zhang <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 11:54:22 -0400 (EDT)

Hello,

Do you have any information about University of Washington imap-utils
package? Where is the web site address? Where can I get it? 
The essential utility in this package is called (I
believe) imapmove and will be used to move users' email from one server to
another. It would be "nice" to have imapmove authenticate via Kerberos.

Any help is appreciated!

*=======================================* 
*	Lynn Zhang             	        *
*	LS&A System Services Team       *
*	[email-masked]               *
*=======================================*

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 13:39:31 -0700 (PDT)

> another. It would be "nice" to have imapmove authenticate via Kerberos.

The UW's IMAP site is at http://www.washington.edu/imap/

That's about all I know about it, though.  :)

--
Scott Leibrand
[email-masked]            (Yes, that is a valid address.)
http://students.washington.edu/leibrand
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