On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 11:32:47AM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: > In this, iconv-hook is described as a method of handling a 'character > set name' that is not known to Mutt. Is there a place where I can find > a list of the character set names that are known to the copy of Mutt > on my machine? Where? How? Or (gently, please) why is this a silly > question?
FWIW, the charset.c source file says that mutt's charset names come from http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/character-sets and that only charsets for which a preferred MIME name is given are listed. > The recommended additions to my .muttrc appear to use a regualar > expression for the value of 'alias'. What part of an email system > would insert things like unknown-8bit into the headers of an email? See RFC1428 (Transition of Internet Mail from Just-Send-8 to 8bit-SMTP/MIME). The answer is: a mail gateway handling an email sent by a pre-MIME client. In English: someone using a very old MUA is sending you e-mail, and you should ask them to upgrade to modern software. Your software can at best only guess what that someone is sending you. > I am certain that my system is improperly configured. I want to fix > it. I have tried many things, well beyond what I would ask you to read > about. But nothing, as done by me, has fixed the problem(s) If you're seeing unknown-8bit then the configuration problem isn't yours. When someone sends you an unknown-8bit message, it could be coded in any of a large number of codesets, and it might even be possible to render that message without question marks in more than one codeset, but it may make sense in only one codeset (or none, if the message is garbage). How can your MUA (mail client) determine which codeset, if any, to use to display unknown-8bit? The best an MUA could do is let you tell it what codeset you think a peer is using (possibly the MUA could try them all, and you'd pick whichever makes sense to you), and then the MUA could keep a little database that it uses to map {<sender>, unknown-8bit} to a codeset later on. It's easier for you to tell your peers to use newer software. Nico --
