1679260 - Missing option "text encoding Unicode/UTF-8" in preferences - Mailnews

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Mark]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 SeaMonkey/2.53.5.1

Steps to reproduce:

SeaMonkey 2.53.5.1 on Linux Mint Mate, installed from Ubuntuzilla, checked in a fresh profile.

Go to Edit > Preferences
Select the "Mail and Newsgroups" > Text Encoding category
Under "Composing Messages", open the "Default Text Encoding" drop-down list

Actual results:

There is no option for Unicode / UTF-8.

If I open about:config, I can set "mailnews.send_default_charset" to "UTF-8", and UTF-8 is then used by default for outgoing messages. So the ability is there - there's just no option in the drop-down in the preferences dialog.

In my current setup, "Default for Current Locale" actually uses UTF-8, but I previously used Windows and there had to set the preference via about:config to get UTF-8 by default.

Expected results:

There used to be an option for Unicode / UTF-8 in the preferences dialog. This disappeared some time ago (I think before version 2.49, maybe even before 2.46) but I don't seem to have reported it.

Comment 1

[Rainer Bielefeld]

Reporter's "product" andso on not not plausible

Comment 2

[Rainer Bielefeld]

Attachment: Compares available text encoding options in various SM versions

I compared available options in various SeaMonkey versions, starting with installed unofficial (by wg9s) De SeaMonkey 2.53.6 beta 1 pre Mozilla/5.0 (NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0 Build 20201115220004 (Newly created User Profile, Default Classic Theme) on German WIN7 64bit:

a) No option "UTF-8" in menu ˋEdit → Preferences → Mail & Newsgroups → Text encodingˊ
b) also not available in SM 2.35 using User Profile from (a)
c) Much more options including UTF-9 available in SM 2.16 using User Profile from (a)
d) selected "UTF8"from (c) now longer available after having switched back to 2.53 using User Profile from (a)
d) I don't know whether that is a Bug or a feature
e) I did not find an obvious DUP with this query
f) Thunderbird Daily 80.0a1 (2020-07-26) (64-bit) has option Utf-8

Comment 3

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

I think this is basically fallout from Bug 934492. Thunderbird added UTF-8 in Bug 1003716 but SeaMonkey only uses a default charset and this may, depending on language, not always be UTF-8. So when the current locale is not using UTF-8 you have no chance to set UTF-8. Would only be needed for this case.

IanN, do you think just adding UTF-8 and translation to https://searchfox.org/comm-esr60/source/suite/mailnews/components/prefs/content/pref-character_encoding.xul
would be all what is needed?

Comment 4

[Ian Neal]

(In reply to Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg) from comment #3)

I think this is basically fallout from Bug 934492. Thunderbird added UTF-8 in Bug 1003716 but SeaMonkey only uses a default charset and this may, depending on language, not always be UTF-8. So when the current locale is not using UTF-8 you have no chance to set UTF-8. Would only be needed for this case.

IanN, do you think just adding UTF-8 and translation to https://searchfox.org/comm-esr60/source/suite/mailnews/components/prefs/content/pref-character_encoding.xul
would all what is needed?

I think so.

Comment 5

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Attachment: 1679260-unicode-25310.patch

Tested with 2.53.10b1pre.

Quirk: if you change to UTF-8 and you default is UTF-8 it will change back to use default. But that was the case for locales using one of the values before too.

I moved other and unicode up and added a separator. These are basically the two non specific options in the list. In an ideal world we would probably end up with UTF-8 only anyway.

Comment 6

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

See also Bug 1034960 so I don't think we want to restore this in the browser settings too.

Comment 7

[Ian Neal]

Comment on attachment 9238416 [details] [diff] [review]
1679260-unicode-25310.patch

>+++ b/suite/locales/en-US/chrome/common/pref/prefutilities.dtd
> <!-- LOCALIZATION NOTE (FallbackCharset.turkish):
>      Translate "Turkish" as an adjective for an encoding, not as the name of the language. -->
> <!ENTITY FallbackCharset.turkish      "Turkish">
>+<!ENTITY FallbackCharset.unicode      "Unicode UTF-8">
I'd prefer: "Unicode (UTF-8)"

>+++ b/suite/mailnews/components/prefs/content/pref-character_encoding.xul
>           <menupopup>
>             <menuitem label="&FallbackCharset.auto;"        value=""/>
>+            <menuitem label="&FallbackCharset.other;"       value="windows-1252"/>
>+            <menuitem label="&FallbackCharset.unicode;"     value="UTF-8"/>
I'd prefer UTF-8 before windows-1252
>+            <menuseparator/>

>           <menupopup>
>             <menuitem label="&FallbackCharset.auto;"        value=""/>
>+            <menuitem label="&FallbackCharset.other;"       value="windows-1252"/>
>+            <menuitem label="&FallbackCharset.unicode;"     value="UTF-8"/>
I'd prefer UTF-8 before windows-1252
>+            <menuseparator/>

r/a=me with those addressed / answered

Comment 8

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Attachment: 1679260-unicode-25310.patch

NITs fixed. Also added a localization note that the unicode fallback is only for mail and news. r/a+ from IanN retained.

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/4848ccd6b0b6
Add Unicode UTF-8 to message display and send encoding preferences. r=IanN

Comment 10

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

https://gitlab.com/seamonkey-project/seamonkey-2.53-comm/-/commit/031c07a20422e6a60aea62faf041f897ad50b19f
Add Unicode UTF-8 to message display and send encoding preferences. r=IanN a=IanN