Character encoding issue

[awaji]

To set this up: I work as a translator and receive many messages with Japanese in the Subject Line, From Line and in the Body of a message.

When I use the webmail interface (when traveling), the character encoding seems to default to "Western," (I'm using Firefox on OS X but I don't think it's a browser problem on my end), and even if I change it to Japanese Shift-JIS or Japanese ISO-2022-JP, the Inbox list does not appear properly, nor does the body copy. I have to forward Japanese messages to my Yahoo Japan account and view them from there.

Is this is "feature" of the Spamcop webmail interface that can somehow be tweaked?

Regards.

Richard (awaji)

[Wazoo]

I don't recall this being brought up before .. so are there any "localization" settings under preferences to even pull something like this in?

I started at http://www.horde.org/horde/docs/?f=TRANSLATIONS.html but I can't actually tell from that if the point is to translate the Hode / IMP screens or the "handled" text ...

http://www.horde.org/faq/admin/config/index.php#c12 Para. 4.1.4 pretty much makes it clear that this is only for the Horde / IMP display stuff.

There's another reference about using foreign language word lists for spell-check, but I don't actually connect that bit to displaying alternate character sets. I actually didn't come across anything in the FAQ that seemed to even approach this issue.

I spent the time going through those support Forums looking for (and found) answers to some issues that were impacting me ... fed JT the data .. and problem solved. Is this enough of an issue that you'd want to spend the time looking to see if anyone else has brought this up to the HORDE/IMP developers?

[awaji]

I don't recall this being brought up before .. so are there any "localization" settings under preferences to even pull something like this in?

  Is this enough of an issue that you'd want to spend the time looking to see if anyone else has brought this up to the HORDE/IMP developers?

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It's the same whether I set the localization to Japanese or English. Improper (garbage) display of Japanese.

Is this enough of an issue? Sure, it shouldn't be that difficult to solve. I'm not that tech-savvy to know what to look for, though. But I did find that there are Japanese developers at imp-jp.org.

Is there something I can do on my end?

Richard (awaji)

[Wazoo]

Just making sure you understand .. I don't have an e-mail account, just volunteering time here. However, I hate that not having answers condition <g> I did spend a bit of time trying to come up with something ..

It's the same whether I set the localization to Japanese or English. Improper (garbage) display of Japanese.

I'm pretty convinced at this point that this only seems to impact the screens, menus, and such ... and even then, only if the supporting files are in place.

One thing that did catch my attention, especially in light of a number of folks that have asked for ways to circumvent some security issues by allowing the e-mail app to go ahead and render HTML. Thus far, that situation has not changed, HTML is not rendered. But I'm wondering if this is part of the connection to your display conditions. The HORDE/IMP thing is offering up the e-mail in a "plain-text" condition, and using whatever the "default" font/character-set the system is using.

I'm going back a number of years .. trying to work things out for a "Mom" here that was going to provide for a foreign exchange student from the Ukraine .. trying to find compatible tools that would handle both ASCII and Cyrillic character sets so that everbody involved could be involved. I'm thinking that this may fall under the same scenario. This app handles alternate character sets, but this one doesn't .. this one will if "set", but it won't 'fall back' ... Some tools worked with just the additional character set added in as a font, other tools had to be forced ...

Is this enough of an issue? Sure, it shouldn't be that difficult to solve. I'm not that tech-savvy to know what to look for, though. But I did find that there are Japanese developers at imp-jp.org.

Is there something I can do on my end?

Based on the above, perhaps contacting these specific developers ...??? Catch is that their experience has been the conversion of all menus and directions to Japanese, and with their systems already set for their locale, they are having the same problem with displaying a Norwegian font ... or simply haven't had the same "problem" brought up ..?? It might be as simple as adding in some more fonts, it may not be possible at all if sticking with the "plain-text" condition.

[Wazoo]

Another page, pointing to the application being the localization thing ... those Japanese developers aren't keeping up http://dev.horde.org/~jan/i18n/ (or this page is woefully out of date?) <g>

[awaji]

Just making sure you understand .. I don't have an e-mail account, just volunteering time here. 

But I'm wondering if this is part of the connection to your display conditions.  The HORDE/IMP thing is offering up the e-mail in a "plain-text" condition, and using whatever the "default" font/character-set the system is using.

Some tools worked with just the additional character set added in as a font, other tools had to be forced ...

Based on the above, perhaps contacting these specific developers ...???  Catch is that their experience has been the conversion of all menus and directions to Japanese, and with their systems already set for their locale, they are having the same problem with displaying a Norwegian font ... or simply haven't had the same "problem" brought up ..??  It might be as simple as adding in some more fonts, it may not be possible at all if sticking with the "plain-text" condition.

21468[/snapback]

As SpamCop is a service that I'm paying $30 a year for, I thought I'd mention this problem on this forum and see if someone could help. All I can do is describe my situation. As far as technical solutions, I would have to leave that up to whoever has designed the system or who is responsible for keeping it running. I really don't understand a lot of what you're talking about, Wazoo, although I appreciate the volunteer help.

As far as the "default" font/character-set the SpamCop webmail system is using, if I set my language preference to Japanese, the menus are translated into Japanese (Inbox, Empty Trash, etc.), but the default is still Western, so the Sender and Subject Line come out as garbage. In that case, I may as well leave my language preference as English, as it doesn't affect the problem.

But something seems to have changed for the better over the last couple of days. I am now able to view properly if I manually change the "Character Encoding" setting each time to, for example, ISO-2022-JP. The only problem now is that my Inbox defaults to Western (ISO-8859-1) (as I just mentioned above) and when I open a message it defaults again to Western, and when I open it in a new window "to display properly" it defaults again to Western. Each time I go to the "View" menu in my browser and if I change it to ISO-2022-JP, I can now view the Japanese properly. But I have to do this three times. Even when my setting is for Auto-Detect Japanese (which remains checked throughout). If this "default to Western" (or whatever) problem can be solved, I will be a very happy camper.

Richard (awaji)

[Jeff G.]

This appears to be a "designed by Western xenophobes for Western xenophobes" problem. Perhaps some of those Japanese developers can point you in the right direction.