Comment 1 Neil MacLeod (reporter) 2009-12-28 14:34:05 UTC

Created an attachment (id=1863) [details]
Email saved from Thunderbird 3.0/Win7

Thunderbird 3.0/Win7 displays the subject correctly.

Comment 2 Neil MacLeod (reporter) 2009-12-28 14:38:54 UTC

Created an attachment (id=1864) [details]
How the subject appears in Modest 2.2009.51-1

Comment 3 Andre Klapper 2009-12-29 15:50:04 UTC

Confirming.

Evolution 2.28.2 also displays the subject incorrectly.
Thunderbird/3.0 (Gecko/20091209 Fedora/3.0-4.fc12) works fine.

I think this is more of a font rather than MUA issue (the screenshot shows a
specific glyph for this character is displayed), but mostly I think it's
INVALID: 0x92 is not a printable ISO-8859-1 character - see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1>.

Comment 5 Neil MacLeod (reporter) 2009-12-31 08:23:20 UTC

(In reply to comment #4)
> I think this is more of a font rather than MUA issue (the screenshot shows a
> specific glyph for this character is displayed), but mostly I think it's
> INVALID: 0x92 is not a printable ISO-8859-1 character - see
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1>.
> 

I agree with you on both counts, it's a font issue and also that 0x92 is not
technically a valid character however the problem is that idiot marketing
people will provide their content in Microsoft Word format with "smart" quotes
Auto-Correct enabled (ie. ‘,’,“ and ”, 0x91-0x94) and these technically invalid
ISO-8859-1 codes then turn up in emails.

As per the section "ISO-8859-1 and Windows-1252 confusion" in the referenced
Wiki page, it would be better if the N900 added support for the missing
Windows-1252 codes 0x80 thru 0x9F, which is what other web browser and email
clients have done since this is a common issue.

So yes technically invalid, but common sense says it should be fixed. :)

(In reply to comment #5)
> I agree with you on both counts, it's a font issue

I was wrong about that actually, the glyph displayed is correct for the
character in question and it's not the font's responsibility to "fix" the
display of garbage input.

> it would be better if the N900 added support for the missing
> Windows-1252 codes 0x80 thru 0x9F, which is what other web browser and email
> clients have done since this is a common issue.

It seems that other email clients deal with this in a variety of ways.  After q
quick survey of the ones I'm using:
- claws-mail displays the character exactly like modest
- mutt displays the character as a question mark (ASCII 0x3F)
- squirrelmail renders a page with iso-8859-1 encoding containing the unicode 
RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (U+2019) character
- thunderbird 2.0 also displays U+2019, but converts to ASCII quote (0x27) when
replying/forwarding.

RFC2047 only has this to say about the issue:

> 6.3. Mail reader handling of incorrectly formed 'encoded-word's
> [...]
>    A mail reader need not attempt to display the text associated with an
>    'encoded-word' that is incorrectly formed.  However, a mail reader
>    MUST NOT prevent the display or handling of a message because an
>    'encoded-word' is incorrectly formed.

Comment 7 Neil MacLeod (reporter) 2010-01-02 15:38:10 UTC

(In reply to comment #6)
> quick survey of the ones I'm using:
> - claws-mail displays the character exactly like modest
> - mutt displays the character as a question mark (ASCII 0x3F)
> - squirrelmail renders a page with iso-8859-1 encoding containing the unicode 
> RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (U+2019) character
> - thunderbird 2.0 also displays U+2019, but converts to ASCII quote (0x27) when
> replying/forwarding.
> 

Were any of those on Windows? Suspect not, as it's quite possibly a Windows or
platform-specific quirk to support the Windows-1252 codes in iso-8859-1.
Technically this may not be a Modest issue, more of a platform issue (Maemo5
supporting the subset of Windows-1252 in iso-8859-1).

Adding such support should do no real harm and only bring benefits for
documents transferred from one platform to another.

(In reply to comment #7)
> Were any of those on Windows?

No, but then neither is modest ;-)

Note that a subject header specifying the correct charset ("Subject:
=?windows-1252?q?We=92ve_lowered_our_prices=2E_Clearance_now_on?=") displays
just fine in modest, mutt, claws etc.

Comment 9 Neil MacLeod (reporter) 2010-01-04 05:37:30 UTC

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> > Were any of those on Windows?
> 
> No, but then neither is modest ;-)
> 
> Note that a subject header specifying the correct charset ("Subject:
> =?windows-1252?q?We=92ve_lowered_our_prices=2E_Clearance_now_on?=") displays
> just fine in modest, mutt, claws etc.
> 

My point is that this anomaly may be present in Windows only - the 0x92
character in an iso-8859 email displays as a single apostrophe (’) just fine in
Thunderbird 3 on Win7.

My usage case is that I receive emails during the day on the N900, then
download them in the evening on a Win7 PC... it would be nice if the N900 could
display the same text as the Win7 PC, presumably by adding support to the N900
for the windows-1252 codes in iso-8859.

Comment 10 Andre Klapper 2012-03-24 11:42:50 UTC

The Maemo 5 User Interface and Maemo 5 platform components (e.g. libraries)
used for the N900 are considered stable by Nokia and it seems that there are no
plans for official updates currently, hence nobody plans to work on this
enhancement/wishlist request. 
(And in case you feel like discussing this situation: Nokia Customer Care or
http://talk.maemo.org would be the place to do so as you will not reach Nokia
officials in this community bugtracker - though all of this is really no news.)

Reflecting this status by setting RESOLVED WONTFIX for this
enhancement/wishlist request (see
https://bugs.maemo.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status for status explanations).

There is a small chance for issues in those Maemo components that are open
source: Contributed patches could be included and made available in the Maemo 5
Community CSSU updates. 
The Maemo CSSU project is run by a small team of volunteers; see
http://wiki.maemo.org/CSSU for more information.
So in case that you can provide a patch that fixes the reported problem, please
feel encouraged to file a request under
https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Maemo%205%20Community%20SSU .
Please note: The Maemo CSSU project is not related in any way to Nokia.


( Tag for mass-deleting bugmail: [cleanup20120324] )