For Long URLs, Accentuated Chars, encode as Quoted-Printable, Western European (ISO), use "EUR" for Euro symbol

[Michel Merlin]

To get rid of the usual problems with long URLs and with European accentuated characters, I recall my earlier suggestions about encoding settings - if you are using OE6 (Outlook Express 6) and IE6 (Internet Explorer 6):

A) In "OE6 > Tools > Options > Send > News Sending Format":

1) Plain Text Settings > Message Format:
* MIME
Encode text using: Quoted Printable
|X| (check) Allow 8-bit characters in headers

If ever QP (Quoted Printable) caused problems (more and more rarely), then:

* Automatically wrap text at 64 characters, when sending
|_| (clear, i.e. uncheck) Indent the original text with [grayed] when replying or forwarding.

Reasons: indent char are useless; unwrapping text starts being crippled at 65 char on some combinations of OS, printer and fonts; almost all mail or news servers now handle properly (unencoded) 8-bit chars in headers.

2) HTML Settings > MIME message Format:
Encode text using: Quoted Printable
|X| (check) Allow 8-bit characters in headers

|_| (clear, i.e. uncheck) Send pictures with messages
|X| (check) Indent message on reply
[grayed:] Automatically wrap text...

Reasons: this way pics will not be embedded as such, but only as links (<IMG src=...>); indentation does work properly in HTML (unless sidebar through page break when printing)

B) Redo (A1) and (A2) in OE6 > Tools > Options > Send > Mail Sending Format, identically (there is no point in any difference here between Mail and News).

C) In "OE6 > Tools > Options > Send > Sending > International Settings":

Default encoding: Western European (ISO)
|X| (checked) When replying to message always use English headers

Reasons: in 2006 about everyone even in the USA has more or less to deal with Western European languages, so plain ASCII isn't enough any more. You can't use UTF-8 because until now it fails to achieve its main goal (handling properly special characters, as European accentuated, or the Euro symbol). Better use "Western European (ISO)" (which goes into your headers as « charset="iso-8859-1" »), that perfectly does it, with the only exception of the typographic Euro symbol; but this one, you benefit from replacing it with the *FINANCIAL* Euro symbol, "EUR", which is just as standard world-wide, and more easily read, understood and written by any person or machine or program anywhere on the planet.

D) In "OE6 > Tools > Options > Read > International Settings":

|_| (cleared) Use default encoding for all incoming messages

Reason: if checked, this case will force OE6 to use your default *writing* encoding when *reading* a message, which will cripple 2 or 3 characters around each European accentuated character in every incoming message when you read it. Of course the right encoding to use in this case is the one of the said incoming message - which is achieved in OE6 by *clearing* this case (and in IE6 by "Auto-Select" below).

E) In "IE6 > View > Encoding", select both "Auto-Select" and "Western European (ISO)". This is necessary since, through forms, IE6 does at the same time read *and write*.

Paris, Sun 19 Nov 2006 19:56:45 +0100