1516774 - Handling of UTF-8 newsgroups name

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Julien ÉLIE]

Attachment: utf8.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_6) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/12.0.2 Safari/605.1.15

Steps to reproduce:

Connect to a news server that has UTF-8 newsgroups names (like news.trigofacile.com).


Actual results:

Newsgroup names are properly decoded in UTF-8 in the message reader UI but not else where.
Example in attached image.


Expected results:

UTF-8 newsgroup names should be properly decoded in sidebars, newsgroup list, dialogs, etc.

Comment 1

[Alfred Peters [:infofrommozilla]]

This is because the default encoding is not UTF-8
(In my new profile it was ISO-8859-1).

Set the encoding to UTF-8:

o Unsubscribe from that UTF-8 Newsgroups (or you'll get an error message later)
o Open the account setting of the news-server (e.g. context menu):
  Settings -> "Account Settings"
  => "news.trigofacile.com" -> 'Server Settings' -> Default Text Encoding [UTF-8]
o Open the newsgoup subscription
  - Refresh the group list!
  - Subscribe to the UTF-8 Newsgroups again.

Here we go...

Comment 2

[Julien ÉLIE]

Oh yes, that works pretty fine, thanks!

I did not know the "Default Text Encoding" setting was for that use.  Shouldn't a better explicit name appear instead?  (like "Default Newsgroup Encoding"?)
Unless this setting is used for other cases?  But if that is the case, it might introduce bugs.  For instance a news server where newsgroup names are in UTF-8, text encoding when writing news articles is GB2312, username/password when authenticating is encoded in GB2312.

Comment 3

[Alfred Peters [:infofrommozilla]]

(In reply to Alfred Peters from comment #1)
> This is because the default encoding is not UTF-8
> (In my new profile it was ISO-8859-1).

That comes from:
Options -> //Display\\ -> /Formatting\ -> [Advanced]
 => "Text Encoding" -> Incomming Mail -> #charset#

If I change this value, it will be copied as the default
for a newly created newsgroup.

We should consider changing the default to UTF-8.
At least for the default of the newsgroup.

Comment 4

[Alfred Peters [:infofrommozilla]]

(In reply to Julien ÉLIE from comment #2)

> I did not know the "Default Text Encoding" setting was for that use. 
> Shouldn't a better explicit name appear instead?  (like "Default Newsgroup
> Encoding"?)
> Unless this setting is used for other cases?

It is used as default for any article with no declared charset. Therefore,
the name probably comes from.

>  But if that is the case, it
> might introduce bugs.  For instance a news server where newsgroup names are
> in UTF-8, text encoding when writing news articles is GB2312,
> username/password when authenticating is encoded in GB2312.

See also: Bug 1389762

Comment 5

[Alfred Peters [:infofrommozilla]]

(In reply to Alfred Peters from comment #3)
> (In reply to Alfred Peters from comment #1)
> > This is because the default encoding is not UTF-8
> > (In my new profile it was ISO-8859-1).
> 
> That comes from:
> Options -> //Display\\ -> /Formatting\ -> [Advanced]
>  => "Text Encoding" -> Incomming Mail -> #charset#

=> Pref: "mailnews.view_default_charset"

> If I change this value, it will be copied as the default
> for a newly created newsgroup.

<https://searchfox.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/news/src/nsNntpIncomingServer.cpp#290>
| rv = NS_GetLocalizedUnicharPreferenceWithDefault(nullptr,
|      PREF_MAILNEWS_VIEW_DEFAULT_CHARSET,
|      NS_LITERAL_STRING("ISO-8859-1"), defaultCharset);

> We should consider changing the default to UTF-8.
> At least for the default of the newsgroup.

Changing the above value would have no effect as ".view_default_charset" is also initialized to "ISO-8859-1".
To ignore ".view_default_charset" is also no option, because the user could have changed it.

So WOUNTFIX?
Or immediately change the default value of ".view_default_charset"?
<https://searchfox.org/comm-central/source/suite/locales/en-US/chrome/mailnews/messenger.properties#256>

But that would be a completely different Bug...

Comment 6

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

(In reply to Alfred Peters from comment #5)
> So WONTFIX?
Who are you asking? Take a decision and/or file a new bug ;-)