Comment 0 for bug 596849

Binary package hint: evolution

When receiving e-mails that do not correctly include information about the character encoding used, evolution is 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? 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 are 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