Hi,
From: "Jason R. Mastaler"
Subject: Re: handling internationalized headers
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 17:42:02 -0600
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> > In general my preference is for simplicity -- unfortunately,
> > simplicity for the user does not necessarily translate into
> > simplicity for the developer and vice versa.
>
> What I'm more worried about is reliability. Simplicity for the user
> often means loss of reliability when you try and cut corners.
I should clarify that I'm not interested in simplicity that sacrifices
a lot of reliability. I was taking reliability as something that
doesn't get lower priority.
> > Of course, it's nicest if you get simplicity in both places!
>
> Agreed. The world of I18N e-mail is anything but simple
> unfortunately. In fact, it's one of the grossest hacks I've ever
> seen.
I agree that's it's not a good scene [1].
> > What I would be happier w/ is something equivalent to what a user
> > does when composing an email message -- the user doesn't have to
> > think about mime-encoding at all assuming the mail client is
> > well-written.
>
> I can investigate this, but I shudder to think about how difficult it
> might be to write a multilingual capable template editor. Think about
> Japanese input methods for example (Canna, Wnn, etc.) -- these aren't
> trivial pieces of code.
To clarify, I didn't mean writing an editor -- what I meant was
something like:
1) User creates template using favorite editor
2) User runs it through program to guess and perform encoding for
headers
Does that seem like it's a lot of work?
> > In general, I am in favor of being able to specify things explicitly.
> > In this case, a downside of this is that the user has to learn how to
> > do it.
>
> I honestly don't think that it will be that difficult for the user
> once I document the process. To be honest, I think there are many
> other aspects of TMDA configuration that are more difficult.
Ok. Perhaps it won't be (-;
Individually, this piece may be less difficult than the other pieces
of TMDA, but it seems to me that the less the user has to learn on the
individual pieces, the less difficult the total will be. Does that
make sense?
> For Japanese, the user will already have to read my HOWTO to realize
> he needs to use only EUC-JP in his templates, and in the same section
> it will explain how to modify the header suffix and BodyCharset.
Just a thought -- it seems to me that if you are going to provide a
way to be explicit about header encodings, you could also let the user
specify what encoding their template is stored in. But perhaps the
trade-off is not worth it. FWIW, I'm perfectly happy w/ templates in
EUC-JP.
> And as I mentioned before, if you maintain a site installation, you
> can change the default templates to EUC-JP encode the body and
> From/Subject headers, so the user will not have to do this. He will
> only have to customize the content if he so desires.
Right.
> > I think what you suggest about seeing if there is an actual need
> > makes a lot of sense.
>
> Yup. I think we'll have to do the best we can, and then lay it on the
> populous for wider feedback. We can always make adjustments based on
> this.
Sounds good.
[1] I've lost many hours trying to get PGP to work Japanese ;-( For
the software I use now it works ok -- it's just that it didn't
used to and other software that other folks I support don't do a
good job...
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