43101 - Cannot read Chinese newsgroup unless reset charset per message

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Internationalization, defect, P3)

Description

[nhottanscp]

Try to read following newsgroup using 6.0.
alt.chinese.text
alt.chinese.text.big5
tw.bbs.soc.politics

Not many messages use the correct charset label (big5) but actually using 
ISO-8859-1 or no charset specified.
Reading these newsgroup using 6.0 is very difficult as you need to change 
charset using the menu almost per message.
4.x has a way to set a charset persistently but that is missing in 6.0.

Comment 1

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

I don't thisnk this is just for Chinese. 
There are also Russian newsgroups which that have the same 
kind of problem. This type of problem is widespread among
other languages which do not necessarily internationally 
establihed standard charset.
What we need is a general way to deal with this type of
issue such as general/persistant override.

I think we can make the task of this type much easier
if we do something like this:

1. Have a way to set persistent override, i.e. have the override 
   be available all the time instead of per message basis.
2. Offer an option to set this in the pref.js when the user
   does a charset override for the first time. 

   "You are overriding the message charset with this 
    menu change. Do you want it to apply all the time
    until you change it back in the Prferences dialog."

Comment 2

[nhottanscp]

nsbeta2, the override functionality has been approved by PDT.

Comment 3

[bobj]

This is the problem I discussed at PDT last Friday and was approved.
What was proposed was a compromise to the folder charset UI.  That bug
should remain open (post-6.0) and we can use this bug to check-in the
compromise solution.

Comment 4

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Putting on [nsbeta2+] radar for beta2 fix. 

Comment 5

[nhottanscp]

Checked in. Added a checkbox after the view default charset pref menu. If that 
is checked, all the messages are forced to that view default unless it is 
manually overrided.

Comment 6

[Katsuhiko Momoi]

** Checked with 8/1/2000 Win32 M17 build **

The check box to force the default View encoding is now working.
This means that the mail body which has incorrect charset info
now can be viewed without switching the menu if the body's 
encoding matches that encoding regardless of what it says in the
Content-type header. 

Marking it verified as fixed.