Changing the default charset for composing messages

T

Tassos Golnas

Hi all,

Among the users in countries with non-western European alphabets, there is a
definite need to be able to set the default character set of the new
messages to the correct value for their language.

AFAIK, Entourage 2004 offers only a per-message manual option of making that
change. Is there a way to include the feature (of setting a default charset
in the Preferences or Account Settings) in a future patch?

In the meanwhile, is it possible to publish a plain text entry with the
appropriate values that can be included in the plist files for Entourage
2004?

Thank you

Tassos Golnas
 
B

Barry Wainwright

Hi all,

Among the users in countries with non-western European alphabets, there is a
definite need to be able to set the default character set of the new
messages to the correct value for their language.

AFAIK, Entourage 2004 offers only a per-message manual option of making that
change. Is there a way to include the feature (of setting a default charset
in the Preferences or Account Settings) in a future patch?

In the meanwhile, is it possible to publish a plain text entry with the
appropriate values that can be included in the plist files for Entourage
2004?

Thank you

Tassos Golnas
Click to expand...

In the preferences, under 'Mail & News/Read', set the default language for
unlabelled messages.
 
T

Tassos Golnas

In the preferences, under 'Mail & News/Read', set the default language for
unlabelled messages.
Click to expand...

Well, that takes care of the RECEIVED mail and news. However, I was talking
about the new (composed) messages, and there is no way to set a default
charset for that.

Thanks

Tassos
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Well, that takes care of the RECEIVED mail and news. However, I was talking
about the new (composed) messages, and there is no way to set a default
charset for that.
Click to expand...
I don't think there's any way of setting that. The default will be the
correct default for the localized version of Entourage you're using. For
2004 only US version is currently out, but within weeks there will be
Japanese, French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and maybe one or two
I've forgotten. They should each have the correct default.

However, once you start typing and then Send, Entourage will choose an
appropriate character set. Probably Entourage will usually choose Unicode
UTF-8 if your message contains characters from more than one character set.
(If I remember correctly, it usually alerts you that it needs to do so. At
least in X it does so.) Most email readers nowadays, especially all
Microsoft email apps since Outlook 97, can read Unicode. In other cases it
will just choose the correct charset on the basis of the characters you've
typed. (That certainly happens for Chinese an Japanese.) I would have
thought it would do so for Central European too, for example, but perhaps
the fact that the message will inevitably include lots of regular Latin
characters may make it prefer UTF-8.

What happens if you don't choose a charset and just type using the language
you ant form the OS's Input (flag) menu? After you send the message, go to
Sent Items, select the message and View/Source. What doe the charset header
say? Is it the wrong charset for your purposes?

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - **2004**, X
or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.
 
T

Tassos Golnas

I don't think there's any way of setting that. The default will be the
correct default for the localized version of Entourage you're using. For
2004 only US version is currently out, but within weeks there will be
Japanese, French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and maybe one or two
I've forgotten. They should each have the correct default.

However, once you start typing and then Send, Entourage will choose an
appropriate character set. Probably Entourage will usually choose Unicode
UTF-8 if your message contains characters from more than one character set.
(If I remember correctly, it usually alerts you that it needs to do so. At
least in X it does so.) Most email readers nowadays, especially all
Microsoft email apps since Outlook 97, can read Unicode. In other cases it
will just choose the correct charset on the basis of the characters you've
typed. (That certainly happens for Chinese an Japanese.) I would have
thought it would do so for Central European too, for example, but perhaps
the fact that the message will inevitably include lots of regular Latin
characters may make it prefer UTF-8.

What happens if you don't choose a charset and just type using the language
you ant form the OS's Input (flag) menu? After you send the message, go to
Sent Items, select the message and View/Source. What doe the charset header
say? Is it the wrong charset for your purposes?
Click to expand...

This is what I have been doing in my attempts to figure out Entourage's
behavior (always talking about E-2004). Occasionally I have to write in
Greek (????????), using the Unicode character palette that OS X provides for
the language and one of the fonts that contain Greek glyphs in the right
places (like Lucida Grande or Verdana for example).

I wish I could make Entourage always default to UTF-8, or at least choose
UTF-8 when it detects multiple charsets. However, all I get is a 7bit,
Windows-1254 encoded email. It doesn't even matter if I use HTML formatting
or not. For reference, the MS encoding "standard" for Greek is
Windows-1253, differing in a couple of places from the ISO-8859-7 standard.

Don't get me wrong, it works correctly if I set it manually, but it would be
really useful to be able to default on UTF-8, especially if you are an
office:mac user in Greece, I would imagine :)

Tassos
 
T

Tassos Golnas

This is what I have been doing in my attempts to figure out Entourage's
behavior (always talking about E-2004). Occasionally I have to write in
Greek (????????), using the Unicode character palette that OS X provides for
Click to expand...

I meant "keyboard", not "character palette", and the word in parentheses
should read like that: Ελληνικά
 
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