Subject: Re: pass chinese characters through mail

From: Ross Paterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 19:41:00 BST

Wei Wang <[email-masked]> writes:
> My last reply and testing message came back to me, but the Chinese
> characters didn't show up on the screen right. I checked the message and
> found out the following three lines were deleted by the mail list server
> from the header part of the message:

> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ASCII
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

You can tell the list server not to delete these lines by sending it
(the list server, [email-masked], _not_ the mailing list)
the command

SET CCNET-L IETFHDR

I did this some time ago, so the list server sent me your message with
these header lines intact, and the local MIME software decoded the
quoted-printable stuff automatically.

So if your aim is merely to get 8-bit text between two MIME-capable
mailers without trusting the network, your method will indeed work.

However, one could use the "charset" parameter to tell the receiving
software what character set one is using.  Some MIME software (including
the the stuff here) can use this information to decide how to display
the text.  For example (Unix/X only), in some systems, including those
based on metamail, one can add lines in the mailcap file to view the
message in a cxterm if it has a particular value of "charset".  My local
setup maps the character set of the message to Unicode and displays the
result in a Unicode window (9term).  Perhaps other systems can select
fonts on the basis of the "charset" parameter.

The proposed name for the widely used mixture of ASCII and high-bit GB is
CN_GB, but this has not yet been presented to the IETF.  Similarly, the
proposed name for the widely used mixture of ASCII and Big-5 is CN_BIG-5.
One is not supposed to use names before they are registered, and private
charset names should begin with "X-".  So perhaps we could settle on the
"charset" values X-CN_GB and X-CN_BIG-5 for the interim, and your header
would be

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-CN_GB
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE