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1a.: Re: Apple-font diacritics From: Harry Flaxman
1b.: Re: Apple-font diacritics From: Alan Fry

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1a.: Re: Apple-font diacritics

Posted by: "Harry Flaxman" harry.flaxman@comcast.net hflaxman001

Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:01 am (PST)

On Jan 18, 2012, at 6:58 AM, Otto Nikolaus wrote:

> 'll see if I can find the thread from last year. I remember the sigma but
> it wasn't the whole story.

… From a US keyboard.

The sigma was caused by typing three periods … …

Don't know if it will work again. I raised the issue that started that thread. I was seeing this after switching over to Lion.

Harry

Harry Flaxman
harry.flaxman@comcast.net

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1b.: Re: Apple-font diacritics

Posted by: "Alan Fry" ajf@afco.demon.co.uk alanjohnfry

Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:07 am (PST)

On 18 Jan 2012, at 00:58, Larson wrote:

> On 17.01.2012, at 21:24, Otto Nikolaus wrote:
>
> >
> > A few months ago we tried to resolve
> > weird stuff happening when someone used ellipses (...) and I don't think we
> > found a reliable solution.
>

How the ellipsis travels through the Yahoo mail servers depends on how the message is composed. If the Mail.app is set to 'Mail->Composing->Message Format == Rich Text' the the settings are:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

The Yahoo servers then merely pass on the whole base64 encoded string unaltered and if there is an ellipsis in the string the receiving Mail.app sees the hexadecimal string =E2=80=A6 (hexadecimal UTF-8 for 'horizontal ellipsis') and prints â€¦ to the screen.

On the other hand if the Mail.app sending the message is set to 'Mail->Composing->Message Format == Plain Text' then the settings are:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Under these circumstances the message is sent (MIME encoded) including the string =E2=80=A6 (for ellipsis) which seems to be decoded by the Yahoo SMTP server and retransmitted as =85, which is the extended ASCII Extended code (ISO 8859-1) for the ellipsis. Mail.app, it seems, invariably decodes hexadecimal =85 (decimal 133) as a Greek capital sigma âˆ'.

The reasons for this are obscure. However there are two Mac extended ASCII encodings (ascii 128 to 255) which are still in use, known as:

Western Mac Mail Encoding
Western Mac OS Encoding

They are radically different from each other, and radically different from the 'standard' ASCII Extended code (ISO 8859-1). In particular code decimal 133 corresponds to

Ellipsis (â€¦) in ASCII Extended Code (ISO 8859-1)
Division sign (Ã·) in Western Mac Mail encoding
Capital O with diaerisis (Ã–) in Western Mac OS encoding

However the Ã– in _Western Mac Mail_ encoding corresponds to the Greek capital sigma (âˆ') in _Western Mac OS encoding_. This I think is where Mail.app gets confused. Whether this should be regarded as Mail's 'behaviour' or a Mail 'bug' is a moot point. But the problem can be avoided by setting Mail.app to 'Rich Text' format in which case all characters travel as UTF-8 strings (neatly packaged to base64) and there is no confusion.

> I copied your passage and pasted it into a word processor so I could examine what you seem to have put inside the brackets. Your ellipse appears to be three dots and not an ellipse which would have appeared had you pressed Option + ";" on the British or the U.S. extended keyboard.
>
> Could you be so kind and type again a genuine ellipse so that we can test if it transmits normal? I remember it used to turn up as Î£ (= Greek sigma) by some Lion users (or was it Snow Leopard? I canâ€™t remember anymore.)
>
> Anyway, Iâ€™ll do the same test now. Here is an ellipse: â€¦ and here are three dots: ...
>
> If somebody sees other characters then please tell us in what browser + version that happens and in what OS.
>
> Otto, you are a Brit, arenâ€™t you? What kind of keyboard layout do you use? I just took a look at the British one and I see only disadvantage compared to the U.S. Extended. The British keyboard layout on the Mac doesnâ€™t even have thorn and eth so there is no way to write Old English with the British keyboard layout.
>

Well I have a Brtitish keyboard too and here are eth and thorn, Ã Ãž, which I must say don't get used very often.

I t will be interesting to see if all the non-ascii characters in this message travel properly through Yahoo's servers -- my Mail is set to 'Rich Text'.

If anyone is interested I have quite a bit of supporting evidence gleaned from the previous lengthy debate about the Ellipsis/Sigma problem which I would be happy to share. Maybe that would be better done off list?

Alan Fry

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