utf-7 encoding (Re: Howto: 32 bit skype, working with a webcam, on 64 bit Fedora 17)

[Kevin Martin]

On 10/22/12 09:52, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Monday, 22. October 2012. 11.25.04 Ian Malone wrote:
>> On 22 October 2012 11:18, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>>> Tim:
>>>>> Discouraged by who?  It's supposedly *the* answer to email
>>>
>>> Ed Greshko:
>>>> UFT-7 isn't widely used....  But if you want to use it go ahead.
>>>
>>> You said it's discouraged.  I've never seen any such comment.  Where do
>>> you find that advice?
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-7#cite_note-0
>> http://www.imc.org/imcr-010.html
>> "It should be noted that the Unicode Standard also defines the UTF-7
>> charset, which was intended for Internet mail. However, MIME is quite
>> capable of carrying UTF-8, and UTF-8 is expected to be used in many
>> protocols, not just Internet mail. Fortunately, very few vendors
>> implemented UTF-7, and its use is strongly discouraged in Internet
>> mail."
>>
>> Essentially it was never a great solution to the problem it was
>> supposed to address (didn't really beat existing methods, UTF-8 in
>> MIME generally turned out to be better). Still, whatever reader Marko
>> is using should be able to handle it, if it is GMail then it's a bug
>> in that.
> 
> I am using KMail (version 4.8.5 that seems to be current for F16). My gmail 
> account is used only to transport mail, I almost never use gmail's web 
> interface (it's just awful...). :-)
> 
> I looked around in the "set encoding" menu in KMail, but UTF-7 was not offered 
> as a choice. UTF-8 and UTF-16 were, along with a whole bunch of others, but 
> UTF-7 does not appear to be supported.
> 
> Maybe it's a bug, maybe it was ignored on purpose, maybe the devs just forgot 
> about supporting a deprecated encoding system... Couldn't find out, google 
> didn't find any relevant bug reports AFAICT.
> 
> But it doesn't matter much anyway. The bigger problem is the mailing list 
> archives, as Ed pointed out. If I look at Tim's original post on the archives,
> 
>   http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2012-October/425826.html
> 
> one can see that the encoding isn't right. However, I can see that Firefox 
> also does not offer UTF-7 as an encoding choice (and I bet none of the modern 
> web browsers do), so anyone watching the archives will have trouble 
> understanding Tim's e-mail...
> 
> Best, :-)
> Marko
> 
> 
It's interesting because in ThunderBird 16.0.1 on Fedora Rawhide an email that Tim sent thru shows this in his comments:


In the /etc/default/grub file, I added this line:

  GRUB+AF8-GFXMODE+AD0-800x600

Then ran the +ACI-grub2-mkconfig+ACI command to regenerate the config file used



While the response to Tim's email (including the lines above) show them displayed as:



In the /etc/default/grub file, I added this line:

  GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600

Then ran the "grub2-mkconfig" command to regenerate the config file used
at boot time.



Which is the correct way for it to be displayed.  So it doesn't look like Thunderbird 16.0.1 likes UTF-7 anymore than some other
clients.  I missed what the point of setting UTF-7 was in the first place but it seems to break more than it fixes.

Kevin