utf-8 subject

[Tim K. (Gmane)]

I'm getting a few emails whose subject in pine shows up as
"=?utf-8?somegarbage"

Is there any setting in pine that I can use to properly decode the
subject? Thunderbird for example displays the subject just fine. The
characters in the subject are all simple ASCII so the terminal should be
able to display them, it's just the encoding that I guess confuses pine ...

Thanks for your help.

[Steve Hubert]

Post by Tim K. (Gmane)
I'm getting a few emails whose subject in pine shows up as
"=?utf-8?somegarbage"
Is there any setting in pine that I can use to properly decode the subject?
Thunderbird for example displays the subject just fine. The characters in the
subject are all simple ASCII so the terminal should be able to display them,
it's just the encoding that I guess confuses pine ...
Thanks for your help.

Could you send an actual example of such a message? Thanks.

Steve

[Vince LaMonica]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008, Steve Hubert wrote:

} On Fri, 7 Mar 2008, Tim K. (Gmane) wrote:
}
} > I'm getting a few emails whose subject in pine shows up as
} > "=?utf-8?somegarbage"
} >
} > Is there any setting in pine that I can use to properly decode the subject?
} > Thunderbird for example displays the subject just fine. The characters in
} > the subject are all simple ASCII so the terminal should be able to display
} > them, it's just the encoding that I guess confuses pine ...
} >
} > Thanks for your help.
}
} Could you send an actual example of such a message? Thanks.

I'm not the OP, but I've been seeing these for years as well. Using 4.64
hand compiled on Linux. I've put up a sample from August 2007 with full
headers at:

http://vjl.org/utf8.txt

HTH,

/vjl/

[Steve Hubert]

Post by Vince LaMonica
}
} > I'm getting a few emails whose subject in pine shows up as
} > "=?utf-8?somegarbage"
} >
} > Is there any setting in pine that I can use to properly decode the subject?
} > Thunderbird for example displays the subject just fine. The characters in
} > the subject are all simple ASCII so the terminal should be able to display
} > them, it's just the encoding that I guess confuses pine ...
} >
} > Thanks for your help.
}
} Could you send an actual example of such a message? Thanks.
I'm not the OP, but I've been seeing these for years as well. Using 4.64
hand compiled on Linux. I've put up a sample from August 2007 with full
http://vjl.org/utf8.txt

Thanks. That is an example of an encoded subject that breaks the rules
because it is too long. Pine strictly enforces the line length limit.

However, it turns out lots of software ignores the line length limit and
so alpine (http://www.washington.edu/alpine/), the follow-on to pine, also
ignores the length limit now and it will decode subjects like that as you
expect (though arguably incorrectly). You can't get pine to decode the
subject but alpine is a replacement for pine that will do the decoding and
does have many other improvements, as well.

Steve

[Vince LaMonica]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Steve Hubert wrote:

} Thanks. That is an example of an encoded subject that breaks the rules because
} it is too long. Pine strictly enforces the line length limit.

Aaaah...thanks for the explanation! Turns out I see them a lot from
flickr.com automated e.mails as well, and they can have very long
subjects.

} However, it turns out lots of software ignores the line length limit
} and so alpine (http://www.washington.edu/alpine/), the follow-on to
} pine, also ignores the length limit now and it will decode subjects
} like that as you expect (though arguably incorrectly). You can't get
} pine to decode the subject but alpine is a replacement for pine that
} will do the decoding and does have many other improvements, as well.

I think I've posted on this list about my opinions about moving to
Alpine, and I mean 100% no offense, but I am still a ways off from
migrating to a 1.0 program. E.mail is my most important....umm..not sure
what to call it, but what I mean is that I like programs that access my
mail to be as stable as can be. I've been using Pine since 3.83 IIRC, and
it has matured into a very rock solid solution for me. As a developer
myself, I know and understand the need to not be maintaining legacy
applications - only so much time in the day, etc.

This is a round-about way of asking if you could point me in the
direction of where to look in the Pine source code so that I could make
Pine ignore line length for subjects. I've lived with that "limit" for
years, so it is not a big deal if you're unable to tell me, but as a good
exercise [for me], it would be cool to tackle that issue.

Also, unrelated - I notice a lot of Alpine posts here - is there a
separate list for Alpine, or are topics about both MUAs
allowed/encouraged here?

Thanks for the info and any pointers you can provide!

/vjl/

[Mark Crispin]

Post by Vince LaMonica
I think I've posted on this list about my opinions about moving to
Alpine, and I mean 100% no offense, but I am still a ways off from
migrating to a 1.0 program.

Would it make you feel any more comfortable to learn that Alpine started
life as Pine 5.0.?

For non-technical reasons (discussed on the Alpine web page), we changed
the name and reset the version number. Alpine 1.00 certainly has major
changes from Pine 4.64 (the last release version of Pine). But it is no
less stable by being named "Alpine 1.00" than if it had been named "Pine
5.00".

Pine 4.64 is two and a half years old now, and has had no updates since
then.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Post by Vince LaMonica
I think I've posted on this list about my opinions about moving to
Alpine, and I mean 100% no offense, but I am still a ways off from
migrating to a 1.0 program.

As a pine user since ages, I moved to alpine (1.0 + Eduardo Chappa's
patches) at the beginning of this year and noticed no drawbacks, some
useful new features and a definite speed improvement in some cases.

And the transition does not need to be abrupt and irreversible. I built
alpine offline from /usr/bin or /usr/local, somewhere under my home, and
simply aliases the invocation of pine to alpine in my mail wrapper script.

I can revert to pine at any time just commenting out that line, or
invoking it directly.

[Steve Hubert]

As a pine user since ages, I moved to alpine (1.0 + Eduardo Chappa's patches)
at the beginning of this year and noticed no drawbacks, some useful new
features and a definite speed improvement in some cases.
And the transition does not need to be abrupt and irreversible. I built
alpine offline from /usr/bin or /usr/local, somewhere under my home, and
simply aliases the invocation of pine to alpine in my mail wrapper script.
I can revert to pine at any time just commenting out that line, or invoking
it directly.

Just a little warning in case people want to do this: there are a few
things that you can configure in alpine that will disrupt pine if you
revert using the same config file. Probably the most noticeable are color
configuration and new tokens in the index format. That is, if you use the
new tokens in alpine they won't work when you revert to pine and if you
use the fancier colors in alpine they won't work right in pine. You could,
of course, make a copy of your .pinerc before changing things in alpine
but then you'd lose the changes that you do want when reverting. If your
experience is anything like ours you won't want to revert, anyway.

Steve

[Steve Hubert]

Post by Vince LaMonica
I think I've posted on this list about my opinions about moving to
Alpine, and I mean 100% no offense, but I am still a ways off from
migrating to a 1.0 program. E.mail is my most important....umm..not sure
what to call it, but what I mean is that I like programs that access my
mail to be as stable as can be. I've been using Pine since 3.83 IIRC, and
it has matured into a very rock solid solution for me. As a developer
myself, I know and understand the need to not be maintaining legacy
applications - only so much time in the day, etc.

Wow, 3.83 is pretty early on! I happen to agree with you about 1.0
programs and I do believe that alpine 1.00 has several problems that pine
4.64 did not have. There was much rewriting of code to get from
4.64 to 1.00. We'll come out with a 1.10 soon and maybe that will be
enough to nudge you over the edge!

Post by Vince LaMonica
This is a round-about way of asking if you could point me in the
direction of where to look in the Pine source code so that I could make
Pine ignore line length for subjects. I've lived with that "limit" for
years, so it is not a big deal if you're unable to tell me, but as a good
exercise [for me], it would be cool to tackle that issue.

I believe, but have not tested, that it is as simple as changing the
definition

#define RFC1522_MAXW 75

in pine/strings.c to something like 256. I think that's all we did to
change it in alpine.

Post by Vince LaMonica
Also, unrelated - I notice a lot of Alpine posts here - is there a
separate list for Alpine, or are topics about both MUAs
allowed/encouraged here?
Thanks for the info and any pointers you can provide!
/vjl/

Thanks, Vince. There is a separate list that is very similar to pine-info
called alpine-info. The newsgroups discussion, however, is taking place in
the same old comp.mail.pine group. Alpine-info is at

Alpine-info mailing list
Alpine-***@u.washington.edu
https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/alpine-info

Steve