Reading UTF-8 Mail (was Re: e-mail encoding/formatting)
On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 01:06:38PM -0400, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
> Heh, much to the detriment? Meh. I’m encouraging those who use good
> mail clients (like mutt) to set them up in a UTF-8-using way! :) And
> on top of that, it’s good typography. Quotes have a history of
> “correct” usage starting LONG before someone decided to cut
> corners and only have straight quotes available. Technology has
> finally gotten around to providing some of the more basic features of
> the Gutenberg printing press. I think this is a great thing.
Ok, I'll bite. How does one configure mutt to display UTF-8 mails
correctly? After a great deal of effort, I've not succeeded.
Mac OS X 10.4.6.
[vetinari:~]$ mutt -v
Mutt 1.4.2.1i (2004-02-12)
Copyright (C) 1996-2002 Michael R. Elkins and others.
Mutt comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `mutt -vv'.
Mutt is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `mutt -vv' for details.
System: Darwin 8.6.0 (Power Macintosh) [using ncurses 5.4]
Compile options:
-DOMAIN
-DEBUG
-HOMESPOOL +USE_SETGID +USE_DOTLOCK +DL_STANDALONE
+USE_FCNTL -USE_FLOCK
+USE_POP +USE_IMAP -USE_GSS +USE_SSL -USE_SASL
-HAVE_REGCOMP +USE_GNU_REGEX
+HAVE_COLOR +HAVE_START_COLOR +HAVE_TYPEAHEAD +HAVE_BKGDSET
+HAVE_CURS_SET +HAVE_META +HAVE_RESIZETERM
+HAVE_PGP -BUFFY_SIZE -EXACT_ADDRESS -SUN_ATTACHMENT
+ENABLE_NLS +LOCALES_HACK +HAVE_WC_FUNCS +HAVE_LANGINFO_CODESET
+HAVE_LANGINFO_YESEXPR
+HAVE_ICONV -ICONV_NONTRANS +HAVE_GETSID +HAVE_GETADDRINFO
-ISPELL
SENDMAIL="/usr/sbin/sendmail"
MAILPATH="/var/mail"
PKGDATADIR="/sw/share/mutt"
SYSCONFDIR="/sw/etc"
EXECSHELL="/bin/sh"
-MIXMASTER
To contact the developers, please mail to <mutt-dev@xxxxxxxx>.
To report a bug, please use the flea(1) utility.
I've been completely unable to get mutt to display extended characters
correctly -- and this is on a Mac, where this sort of thing is supposed
to be easy; I know I have fonts installed for this sort of thing.
This has failed in both xterm (with LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8) *and* in
Apple's Terminal.app, which is configured for UTF-8 text.
Problem 1: the folder index is completely broken. The threading
characters fail to display correctly, and update is broken. Scrolling
backwards through a large folder results in a completely corrupted
display; see
<http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/cobbe/misc/mutt-utf-8/broken-index.png> for
a screenshot. (This and all other screenshots display the output in
Terminal.app; xterm's output is similar.) Setting ascii_chars to yes
helps, but I shouldn't have to do that -- the whole point of this
exercise is to display extended characters correctly!
This isn't just an xterm or terminal problem. When I construct a small
text file containing three copies of a box drawing character (Unicode
0x251C), cat displays it fine in both Terminal.app and a unicode xterm.
Problem 2: displaying email messages with extended chars also fails,
though less spectacularly. See
<http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/cobbe/misc/mutt-utf-8/broken-quotes.png>
for a screenshot of the paragraph that I quoted from Kyle's message
above, rendered in Terminal.app.
Suggestions welcome. Using an X client as my terminal is not something
I'm willing to give up, though, for a variety of unrelated reasons.
Is this an issue of not using a recent enough Mutt?
Or has computer technology not, in fact, caught up with hot metal
typesetting?
Richard