Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[Chris Yocum]

While I have used emacs for a while as a text editor, etc.  I am now
using VM 8.1.0 in emacs to compose and send mail as well.  I noticed
that when I composed mail in either Message or Mail Mode that the MIME
attributes stated that I was sending a charset of us-ascii and I would
really like to send my mails with utf-8 set as the character set.
Does anyone know the magic incantation to get Mail/Message Mode to do
that?  I am using EMACS 23.1.1 on amd64 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
Thank you all very much in advance.

Chris

Re: Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[Tim X]

Chris Yocum <cyocum@gmail.com> writes:

> While I have used emacs for a while as a text editor, etc.  I am now
> using VM 8.1.0 in emacs to compose and send mail as well.  I noticed
> that when I composed mail in either Message or Mail Mode that the MIME
> attributes stated that I was sending a charset of us-ascii and I would
> really like to send my mails with utf-8 set as the character set.
> Does anyone know the magic incantation to get Mail/Message Mode to do
> that?  I am using EMACS 23.1.1 on amd64 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
> Thank you all very much in advance.
>

I'm not sure that is a good idea. From memory, the RFCs for mail specify
messages should be 7 or possibly 8 bit. If you must use UTF-8, you
probably have to set things up to send as MIME. Most mail servers will
probalby handle UTF-8 fine, its the occasional one that doesn't which
will cause things to go weird.

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[Chris Yocum]

On 2010-04-15, Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
> Chris Yocum <cyocum@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> While I have used emacs for a while as a text editor, etc.  I am now
>> using VM 8.1.0 in emacs to compose and send mail as well.  I noticed
>> that when I composed mail in either Message or Mail Mode that the MIME
>> attributes stated that I was sending a charset of us-ascii and I would
>> really like to send my mails with utf-8 set as the character set.
>> Does anyone know the magic incantation to get Mail/Message Mode to do
>> that?  I am using EMACS 23.1.1 on amd64 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
>> Thank you all very much in advance.
>>
>
> I'm not sure that is a good idea. From memory, the RFCs for mail specify
> messages should be 7 or possibly 8 bit. If you must use UTF-8, you
> probably have to set things up to send as MIME. Most mail servers will
> probalby handle UTF-8 fine, its the occasional one that doesn't which
> will cause things to go weird.
>

I primarily use Google's gmail smtp so I am pretty sure it will be
alright.  If I run into problems, I can just fall back to the default.

Thanks!,
Chris

Re: Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[José Manuel García-Patos]

> Does anyone know the magic incantation to get Mail/Message Mode to do
> that?  I am using EMACS 23.1.1 on amd64 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
> Thank you all very much in advance.

I have the following lines in my VM configuration file:

(setq vm-mime-8bit-composition-charset "utf-8"
      vm-mime-7bit-composition-charset "utf-8"
      vm-mime-8bit-text-transfer-encoding '8bit)

Hope that helps. Check the documentation for
vm-mime-8bit-text-transfer-encoding, as you may need a different
value. Also, there is a gnu.emacs.vm.info newsgroup for VM-related
issues.

-- 
José Manuel García-Patos
Madrid

Re: Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[Tim X]

Chris Yocum <cyocum@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2010-04-15, Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>> Chris Yocum <cyocum@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> While I have used emacs for a while as a text editor, etc.  I am now
>>> using VM 8.1.0 in emacs to compose and send mail as well.  I noticed
>>> that when I composed mail in either Message or Mail Mode that the MIME
>>> attributes stated that I was sending a charset of us-ascii and I would
>>> really like to send my mails with utf-8 set as the character set.
>>> Does anyone know the magic incantation to get Mail/Message Mode to do
>>> that?  I am using EMACS 23.1.1 on amd64 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
>>> Thank you all very much in advance.
>>>
>>
>> I'm not sure that is a good idea. From memory, the RFCs for mail specify
>> messages should be 7 or possibly 8 bit. If you must use UTF-8, you
>> probably have to set things up to send as MIME. Most mail servers will
>> probalby handle UTF-8 fine, its the occasional one that doesn't which
>> will cause things to go weird.
>>
>
> I primarily use Google's gmail smtp so I am pretty sure it will be
> alright.  If I run into problems, I can just fall back to the default.
>
Its been some years since I had to run and configure mail servers, so my
knowledge could well be outdated. However, thge issue isn't with your
SMTP server, but rather the various SMTP servers your mail may travel
through on its route to the destination address your sending mail to.
Keep in mind that you have no control or even knowledge regarding what
SMTP servers are involved in the delivery of messages you send. This is
one reason why mail is considered to be a very insecure mode of
communication. You may know and trust the SMTP server you use and you
may even know and trust the SMTP server of the recipient, but you have
know way of knowing for certain what other servers and networks that
message may pass through on its route to the recipient. Unfortunately,
there are almost as many badly configured mail servers out there as
badly configured Domain Name Servers. This is why I think it is best to
stick to the lowest common denominator, which in the case of mail is
using 7bit ASCII and if you must use characters that cannot be
represented in basic ASCII, use MIME encoding. 

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[Chris Yocum]

On 2010-04-16, José Manuel García-Patos <jgarciapa3@alumno.uned.es> wrote:
>> Does anyone know the magic incantation to get Mail/Message Mode to do
>> that?  I am using EMACS 23.1.1 on amd64 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
>> Thank you all very much in advance.
>
> I have the following lines in my VM configuration file:
>
> (setq vm-mime-8bit-composition-charset "utf-8"
>       vm-mime-7bit-composition-charset "utf-8"
>       vm-mime-8bit-text-transfer-encoding '8bit)
>
> Hope that helps. Check the documentation for
> vm-mime-8bit-text-transfer-encoding, as you may need a different
> value. Also, there is a gnu.emacs.vm.info newsgroup for VM-related
> issues.
>

Thanks!  I know about the other newsgroup (and I subscribe) but I
didn't know if this was a VM issue or a Mail mode issue so I started
here first.  Thanks again!

Chris

Re: Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[Uday S Reddy]

Chris Yocum wrote:
> 
> Thanks!  I know about the other newsgroup (and I subscribe) but I
> didn't know if this was a VM issue or a Mail mode issue so I started
> here first.

You are right.  VM does use mail-mode to send messages.  However, since mail-mode doesn't handle MIME, VM takes care of all the MIME-encoding before invoking the mail-mode mail sending functions.  

This is likely to change in future, with the move to message-mode.

Cheers,
Uday

Re: Message/Mail Mode and UTF-8

[Uday S Reddy]

On 4/15/2010 11:38 PM, Tim X wrote:
> Chris Yocum<cyocum@gmail.com>  writes:
>
>> While I have used emacs for a while as a text editor, etc.  I am now
>> using VM 8.1.0 in emacs to compose and send mail as well.  I noticed
>> that when I composed mail in either Message or Mail Mode that the MIME
>> attributes stated that I was sending a charset of us-ascii and I would
>> really like to send my mails with utf-8 set as the character set.
>> Does anyone know the magic incantation to get Mail/Message Mode to do
>> that?  I am using EMACS 23.1.1 on amd64 Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
>> Thank you all very much in advance.
>>
>
> I'm not sure that is a good idea. From memory, the RFCs for mail specify
> messages should be 7 or possibly 8 bit. If you must use UTF-8, you
> probably have to set things up to send as MIME. Most mail servers will
> probalby handle UTF-8 fine, its the occasional one that doesn't which
> will cause things to go weird.

[This is funny.  I can see your response in gmane, but not Chris's original query.]

I think Chris just wants to use Unicode characters.  He wouldn't mind if the messages get MIME-encoded.

Chris, the VM variable to set is `vm-mime-8bit-composition-charset'.   See the VM manual section on "Sending Messages" -> "MIME composition".

By the way, VM uses mail-mode.  There is a plan to switch it to message-mode, but that won't happen for a while yet.

Cheers,
Uday