Re: [tlug] "UTF-8 & ISO-2022-JP"

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Hamilton <awh@example.com> writes:

    Andrew> ISO-2022-JP has pretty much been the "network encoding"
    Andrew> for email messages [for 10 years]

The JUNET encoding, yes.  Nifty and/or Nifty customers didn't catch on
until about 2000, permitting raw Shift-JIS even in the headers until
at least 1997, and some of the other large Japanese ISPs were almost
as bad.

    Andrew> Nothing about either protocol (IRC or SMTP) says that any
    Andrew> of the communication has to be 8-bit-safe, so it's
    Andrew> certainly possible that someone is running a fully
    Andrew> standards-compliant server that still fails to transmit
    Andrew> EUC, SJIS, or UTF-8.

Possible, but highly unlikely.  Modern MTAs aren't a problem; most
will autocode a 7-bit transfer encoding (BASE64 or quoted-printable)
if the partner doesn't announce support for 8 bits.  And most MUAs
will send 8-bit text already encoded.

So the problem is mostly with the receiving MUAs.


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