266163 - make an option to downconverting all mail's character set to a widely used, or the preferred character set automatically

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Földényi Tamás]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1

If I write a mail, but there are some fancy characters in it, say '...' (three
dots character) the mail program says, that it is not possibile to send in the
selected encoding, so there are two options: send in UTF-8, or further editing
of the message.

There should be a third option: downconvert to the preferred (or some other)
charater set, and a checkbox: remind my decision.

It is very important, because lot of mail clients (such as outlook express)
can't read utf-8 encoded messages, and therefore many languages are unreadable
in that. Further editing is not a solution, because a secretary won't know what
the heck is encoding, and will simply send the message in utf-8 format, what is
commpletly unreadable for the other secretary. That's why the 'remind my
decision checkbox' is important. Furthermore, make a way for the administrators
to set this option somewhere in the preferences.

To represent the problem:
For hungarian language, the preferred encoding is ISO-8859-2. If there is some
char like 'ô' (not in ISO-8859-2, but widely used replacing hungarian ő) it
should be downconverted to 'o', the same way as 'three dots char' should be
downconverted to three dots. If there is no downconverting, all the special
hungarian chars (áíűőüöúóé) are unreadable. So all the mail is unreadable,
because almost every word contains these chars.

I hope you realise why is it so important. Without these options, Thunderbird is
not a replacement for Outlook Express in many country. (esp. for bussiness use)

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Földényi Tamás]

By the way, the pop-up box is not the best way, either. There should be a yellow
triangle icon on the status bar or an extra appearing bar like the pop-up
blocker in firefox to indicate the encoding problem. In this way, after clicking
on this bar, you could select one from a menu:
-highlighting the problematic charaters
-downgrade the text for the preferred character set (like in OE)
-change charater set to a suggested one (ISO-8859-15, UTF-8) (note: three dots,
and others are not in ISO-8859-15)

And the last user selection could be the default, if the user won't clik on this
bar next time. (very default could be UTF-8, if you suggest)

And again, offering conversion to UTF-8 and editing ONLY is not viable for
bussiness use. A company can't bargain his clients to use a mail client that
understand UTF-8, and can't expect secretaries to find all the special
characters copied from MS Word like 'three dots', inverted quotation marks, and
others what are only in UTF-8 and replace it in order to able to send the mail
what is readable by the receipent.

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.