Evolution does not use the character encoding that is hinted at in the subject line

[Rune K. Svendsen]

Binary package hint: evolution

When receiving e-mails that do not correctly include information about the character encoding used, evolution does not display the e-mail correctly, even when the character encoding used is revealed in the subject line.

By looking at the raw e-mail, I presume the correct way to specify character encoding is by using the "Content-Type" MIME header.
However, if the subject of the e-mail is encoded using a specific character encoding (by following the following standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Encoded-Word), wouldn't it be safe to assume that the e-mail body - if it does not specifically specify a character encoding - uses the same character encoding as the subject line? Are there any examples where this might not be the case?

I know this is one of those cases, where the easiest solution would be if the e-mail client sending the message would just follow the standard correctly, but I think that we as Linux users are currently in a situation where we gain more by adapting to the various flaws in non-standard e-mail clients, rather than try to get them to adhere to the standard, using our relatively tiny market share.
We do this with hardware drivers in the kernel - adapt to the various quirks that are there mostly because of non-standard ways in which Microsoft Windows handles the hardware. Why not do this as well with e-mail, which is quite a big part of any modern operating system?

Example:

I receive an e-mail with the following content:

    Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?din_bestilling_-_ordre_nr_123456?=
    Sender: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?someone@somewhere=2Edk?=" <email address hidden>
    From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?someone@somewhere=2Edk?=" <email address hidden>
    Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:47:48 +0200
    To: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?mymailaddress@mail=2Ecom?=" <email address hidden>
    X-Priority: 3
    X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    X-Mailer: JMail 4.4 by Dimac
    Content-Type: text/html

    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

The "Content-Type"-header does not correctly state that the character encoding used is ISO-8859-1, but the subject line uses an Encoded-Word to specify this information (and Evolution correctly displays the subject line).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: evolution 2.28.3-0ubuntu10
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.36-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jun 21 13:19:05 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha i386 (20100405)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_DK.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evolution

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for the report, that's known upstream you can track it here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615400

[Rune K. Svendsen (runeks)]

this bug does not concern decoding an Encoded-Word in a mailto url

[Rune K. Svendsen (runeks)]

I have reported the bug upstream, and linked this bug report to that newly reported GNOME bug report, replacing the link to bug 615400 with the newly reported bug. I have also removed the "likely-dup" tag because this bug is not (very) related to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615400.
This bug concerns which character encoding to choose for the message body, when the message body's character encoding is not specified, but the subject's character encoding is correctly specified using an Encoded-Word. Bug 615400 concerns the decoding of Encoded-Words in mailto-URLs from web pages.

[Jörg Frings-Fürst (jff-de)]

Bug from 2010. Version not longer supportet.
Change status to Invalid (see gnome-bugs)