Re: Japanese language email problem (cont'd)

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> "Dennis" == Dennis McMurchy <denismcm@example.com> writes:

    Dennis>   Hi, I posted some Japanese text to the list yesterday
    Dennis> and asked if it was readable or not.  It was, although I
    Dennis> now realize that Windoze and Mac people can probably only
    Dennis> read new-JIS (and not EUC) encoded mail.

Any usable mail software will handle EUC I think, since many systems
simply send mail in their native format, which is often EUC.  Simple
mail software which depends on the system won't be able to do so.

    Dennis>   He sent back some of the (new-JIS) stuff that I had sent
    Dennis> him, and it looks like this:

    >> _$BKLL=M-5{!$B6L>`*rJ!#rJG7Bg!$ITCNB6Q\@example.com$Li!#2=<)`*D;!$B6L>_(B

Something somewhere is "correcting" the ESC (0x1b) characters to
underscores.  It's not your system, I don't think (the only suspect is 
Pine, but you checked the mail queue and it was all right).  It could
be the MTA on his system, but that's highly unlikely.  So my suspect
would be his Windoze software.

Since this is JIS, if Pine allows, you should see if you can correct
the content-type headers to "charset=ISO-2022-JP".  I believe that the
ISO-2022-JP standard permits the use of ordinary ASCII (specifically
ISO-646, I think it is) but not the ISO-Latin-* character sets.  So it 
won't hurt any of your correspondents using Japanese software, and the 
mail user agents of the US software-using types may complain about
unrecognized MIME type but should just pass your (ASCII) message
through to the display.

Despite my earlier comments about standards (in response to Kazuyuki
"ikko-" Okamoto), unless you are willing to switch your mail software
(and check the new program for compliance) "ikko-" is probably right
that you should just default to "Content-type: text/plain;
charset=ISO-2022-JP".  You may be able to do this in Pine via [S]etup
[C]onfiguration [customized-hdrs]; unfortunately it seems that Pine
will add its own conflicting Content-Type header.  It's not obvious
how to disable this, if it's at all possible.  (pine.conf and .pinerc
simply seem to be config-file interfaces to the same functionality).
You may also want to set [S][C][default-composer-hdrs] to
automatically display it.  You can always access it via C-R "Rich
Headers" in the composer.

    Dennis>   Does anyone have any idea how to solve the problem?  (My
    Dennis> correspondent runs Win95J on Mitsubishi DOS/V hardware.

Yuck.  I had to deal with a machine like that once.  The dealer gave
lots of service and didn't charge for it, but it took up lots and lots of 
the owner's time, my time, the technical staff's time, and the
dealer's time.  Mitsubishi as of mid-1995 was still selling desktop
machines that were nowhere near 100% compatible.

    Dennis> I'm afraid I don't know right now what mailer he is using,
    Dennis> but he has mentioned MS-IME95.

This is the kana-kanji software, I should think.  Probably not
related.  I would guess he's using MS-Exchange for mail in that case;
I seem to recall that this was also an issue on my buddy's Mitsubishi/
Win95J machine, but there should be a way to fix it in one of the
menus :-P

    Dennis> What does it all mean, if anything ?-)

42.  <IMG ALT="" ALIGN=middle SRC="http://130.158.99.4/gadgets/gaijin.gif">

Steve

-- 
                           Stephen John Turnbull
University of Tsukuba                                        Yaseppochi-Gumi
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences  http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com
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