On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 11:02:56 -0500, Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> I've been doing some experiments (results at
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JRW_test/messages ). The conclusion is
> that for general character sets, the only general purpose workable way
> from a browser window is for both sender and receiver to manually select
> UTF-7. Unfortunately, this is not available from Internet Explorer 6.0,
> at least not on Windows XP. (It is from Firefox, but not everyone may
> use the browser they prefer.)

I'm willing to select UTF-7 for some Qalam messages, if they don't cause
horrid messes with ASCII folk. As well, I'd be glad to send a few
characters, using any U+ code points (not sure whether 5-digit hex
works...)

IE is considered by many experts to be a serious security risk; I
recommend not using it if you can possibly avoid doing so. I like Firefox;
it has a particularly "clean", humane, notably-"common-sense" design...
Make that "uncommon sense". (Please upgrade FF to 1.0.1, btw!) Also has a
big bunch of extensions.

However, I routinely use, and for the most part, like, Opera. I'm using,
now, what is essentially Opera 8 beta 3. One minor, but very nice detail,
is that the e-mail composer has a dropdown selector (up in the header) for
encoding, although it tends to go back to your default (mine's '8859-15)
while you aren't looking. (It does stick, however, if you enter anything
not supported by your encoding.)

A very nice feature, which works fine with very-acceptable occasional
restrictions, is that the e-mail composer accepts hex numbers in-line; try
starting with a space, key in the hex code point no., and poke (left)
Alt+X. The digits are speedily "swallowed" and rendered as that code
point, if there's a font installed to render it. Combined with Alt+0nnn,
it makes occasional entries very clean. Just this morning, I composed a
short bilingual message in Spanish and English, using Alt-0nnn.

= (Does ArialUni include dingbats? I'll try, some other time.)

Summary results *on this computer*, reading the test messages, by message
no.:

I shouldn't have expected Opera's automatic encoding selector to work on
these, and it didn't. However, selecting a matching UTF encoding (View -->
Encoding ... ) worked nicely.

1. Some chars. rendered fine; I saw some peculiar pairs, as if there were
trouble with utf-8. (Screen shots to JRW on request)

2. Probably identical with 1.; I didn't check carefully, char. by char.

3. First 8 rows rendered fine. Second 8 were "no-such-glyph-avail."
symbols; I don't know why. Perhaps ArialUni limitations? I doubt that.

4. Like 3, probably identical.

5. Anyone who has ASCII can read this one! (^_^)

6. Like 4.

Another way of creating various UTF encodings is the very nice
freeware/limited multilingual editor called SC Unipad. It does Arabic
shaping and joining (optional!) and full 64-level BiDi, iirc. It has,
iirc, a 1,000-char. limit on file size, but for many, that's still useful.
Unrestricted cost is rather steep for dilettantes. Last time I checked,
its fonts were included as part of the total package, which is a nice,
small download. Sorry, Mac folks, it's Wintel only, I think.

Interesting to see "raw" UTF-7, probably my first view of it, other than
casual experiments in Unipad some time back. "A+..." ! Clever choice of
encoding (not nec. valid for all possible UTF-7 codepoints; have forgotten
all the details.)

> Sending e-mails in UTF-8 does work, but receivers using the browser must
> explicitly set the encoding to UTF-8. (It generally stays on that
> setting for subsequent Yahoo groups' pages.)

Stays... My encoding selection stayed, but that's the way Opera works;
once taken out of Automatic, it (very likely) even persists between
sessions.

> Sending e-mails in UTF-7 is a good way of making Internet Explorer users
> feel excluded. All they can get is mujibake!

Don't tell that to the the Slashdot teen-agers! (^_^)

Thanks much, Richard.

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath