Hi,
The following might be of some use to you in making a decision.
Let me provide background info on what we did at Netscape for
Communicator 4.x and Netscape 6/Mozilla mail.
1. Prior to Comm 4.5, we recommended UTF-7 as the default Unicode
charset for mail.
2. After consulting several mail experts inside and outside Netscape, we
decided to go with UTF-8 as the default charset for Comm 4.5 primarily
for 2 reasons. First, UTF-7 has never gained the status of the default
Unicode charset and instead UTF-8 was becoming the default Unicode
charset. Second, 8-bit encodings are not that problematical these days
as evidenced by the fact that they are used as standard mail encodings
in Korean, Chinese and European languages.
3. While UTF-7 can be displayed by most major mail programs today, there
is a question of promoting a single Unicode mail encoding. At least we
thought it would be better if we stick to one encoding for Unicode
sending messages. For dusplaying messages, we do support UTF-7.
4. There is a bit of problem in Mozilla/Netscape 6 for replying to
messages encoded in UTF-7. The mail compose window lists only standard
(or near-consensus standard) encodings. In replying to a UTF-7 message,
the charset of the reply mail will reflect the original encoding. But
that item (UTF-7) will not be visible on the Compose window encoding
menu because it is not on the default list of the recommended mail-send
encoding. One might say that this is a bug in Mozilla but my feeling is
that we should promote only standard or near standard mail encodings. I
don't believe we should unnecessarily increase send-mail encodings in use.
- Kat
Marc Mutz wrote:
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On Wednesday 05 December 2001 16:37, Keith Moore wrote:
Is it safe to make UTF-7 the charset to use as "last
resort" instead of UTF-8?
No. The only charset supported by all major MUAs is ASCII.
Though I think you know very well what I meant, let me restate the
questions more precisely ;-)
When sending a textual mail, we have to choose a charset that is capable
of representing all contained characters (internally, we use unicode)
to use for the text/plain body part. We currently try us-ascii,<locale
charset>,utf-8 (in that order). So you could see UTF-8 as a fallback
for _text/plain bodypart charsets_.
Now, we are discussing making UTF-7 that default instead of UTF-8,
because it doesnt need further Content-Transfer-Encoding processing on
top of it.
Would we seriously decrease interoperability with other mail clients by
doing this? And don't tell me: "Yes, with all those who don't speak
anything but us-ascii" because they are not a likely target of a mail
that someone sends, but which can't be represented in his own locale's
charset. Also, the question is not "shall we use charsets other than
us-ascii", but "is it OK to use UTF-7 where we'd else use UTF-8"?
Hope I made my question clear enough this time. :-)
Marc
- --
An der Prioritätenskala wehrhafter Demokratien gibt es nichts zu
deuteln: Erst kommt die Stärke, dann Freiheit Hand in Hand mit der
Gerechtigkeit und in der Nachhut trottet der Frieden hinterher.
-- Goedart Palm "Der Friedensnobelpreis und ein bisschen Krieg"
Telepolis 2001/10/13 (#9807)
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--
Katsuhiko Momoi <momoi(_at_)netscape(_dot_)com>
Senior International Manager, Web Standards/Embedding
Netscape Technology Evangelism/Developer Support