[Mailman-Users] accents in subjects

[Anders Bandholm]

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Fil wrote:

> * Paul Tomblin (ptomblin at xcski.com) écrivait :
> > Quoting Fil (fil at bok.net):
> > > This 1) prevents confirmation from working when the client mailer is stupid
> > > enough to use "Réf. :" instead of "Re:" ;  2) makes the digests ugly and
> > 
> > Using "Réf. :" instead of "Re:" is a violation of RFC822.  I wish mail
> > user agent writers would actually read the damn RFCs instead of assuming that
> > Re: is an abbreviation for an english word!  Let me guess - it's a Microsoft
> > product right?
> 
> Let me check.... must be 'Notes' in French version (although I'm not
> certain).  However it's not only a question of 'Réf.' but of any accentuated
> Subject: when it comes to the digest issue. So mailman is also a little
> faulty here.

We can all agree that the idea that "Re:" means "regarding:" or
"reply:", and it must be translated is completely stupid. I used to use a
Danish version of Outlook Express, and I always tried to remember to edit
the "Sv:" into "Re:"

The real problem her is that you can use any character set for the header,
and then MIME-encode it - this is what happened to your example. But
Faulty? What do you suggest? Conversion into ASCII is not a general
solution as Mailman could be used for discussion in languages that need
characters beyond ASCII. 

How would you handle a discussion on "blåbærgrød" (Danish for a fictions
Blueberry dish) - this subject needs MIME-encoding ;-)

The true problem is that theoretically the subjects could be in several
different character sets, and in the list they need to be represented in a
single charset. When everybody use Unicode, it will work, but until then
there is no general solution. An acceptable interim solution could be to
use ISO-LATIN-1 for the list of subjects (the whole list would then by
MIME-encoded, and OK)

Cheers,
Anders
--
Anders Bandholm, UNI-C, Aarhus
  Email: Anders.Bandholm at uni-c.dk
  Phone:  (+45) 8937-6645   Fax: (+45) 8937-6677    ICQ: 20617502
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