If it makes any difference I am using Thunderbird, I am not  big fan of it but it is the best of available email clients I have tried.

Tim H

On 13/12/2024 15:46, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
Hi Graeme,

I do not understand why the fstab line in Tim's "NAS not Auto
Mounting" post contains several triple "?".  I've noticed in other
messages that the query symbol often appears in a non-interrogative
context.  The messages are apparently coded UTF-8.  What's going on
please?
It seems some of the email programs used by writers to the list think
it's helpful to turn multiple spaces into a non-braeking space.
I notice this because it interferes with vim's re-formatting of the text
when I trim down the quoting in my reply.

It's a daft idea.  I think Outlook does it too.

Here's a sentence ending in two spaces.  And a second sentence after
which I'll put two non-breaking spaces.  Perhaps that shows a difference
when you view it.

The normal space is U+0020 in Unicode, the non-breaking one is U+00A0.
In UTF-8, the normal space is just the single byte 0x20, but U+00A0
needs two bytes: 0xc2 0xa0.

     $ printf ':\u00A0:' | hd
     00000000  3a c2 a0 3a                                       |:..:|
     00000004
     $

An email program running in a UTF-8 locale should display both kinds as
space on the screen.  That you see triple ‘?’ suggests something,
somewhere your end isn't keen to show UTF-8.  Try this printf(1) to see
if you get the same result.

     $ printf '\u00a342\n'
     £42
     $


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