[TriLUG] Email: Character Encoding

[Jack Hill]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:59:21 -0400
Alan Sterger <asterger at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Listers:
> 
> What is the most "compatible" email character encoding scheme?
> 
> My assumption for compatibility is the encoding scheme needs to be a
> super-set of what I'm currently using or a super-set of something
> else.  Currently my Thunderbird client is using Western fonts with
> Character Encoding as "Western (ISO-8859-1)" for both Incoming and
> Outgoing email.
> 
> I ask as an email in yesterday's TriLug digest from Crist?bal Palmer
> eluded to a lack of support for utf8.  Have seen Mr Palmer's posts
> before, but assumed the display of his first name was the result of a
> unique signature.  Also have occasional display issues between the
> wife's Outlook email and Thunderbird.  In the old days, ISP/email
> vendors munged anything that wasn't US ACSII 7.  Is that still the
> case?
> 
> I'm curious if I'm using an optimum Thunderbird character encoding.
> 
> What are you thoughts, recommendations?

You’re currently using ASCII, not ISO-8859-1. “Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed"”

I highly recommend using UTF-8 everywhere.

You are correct that non-ASCII characters are not allowed in SMTP, so
they have be encoded somehow (usually base 64 or quoted printable).

Email is old, it has a lot of cruft: http://yapcasia.org/2011/talk/59

Jack
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