Re: [smtpmail.el] Encoding problem in smtpmail-send-queued-mail

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Jesper Harder wrote:

> I did some tests by sending utf-8 with CTE 8bit -- and binding
> `smtpmail-code-conv-from' doesn't work in this case.  When I run
> `smtpmail-send-queued-mail' Emacs asks me to select a coding system:
> 
> ,----
> | These default coding systems were tried:
> |   iso-latin-1-unix

This last snippet indicates that Emacs visited the file thinking it
was a Latin-1 file, which is wrong.  That's why it says iso-latin-1
above, and that's why the mail goes out garbled.

The problem here is that it is not a good idea to let Emacs guess the
encoding of a file, as it does by default, if we already know what the
encoding is.  That's why I think the two alternatives I outlined in my
previous message are the right ones: either don't use any conversions
at all, or force the same conversion as was used when the file was
written.

I think the first alternative, the one you originally suggested, is a
better one, since Emacs doesn't need to do anything with the file
except send it down the mail pipe.  So code conversions seem like a
waste of CPU cycles.

Simon, do you agree with this reasoning?

> BTW, it should probably also be checked if feedmail.el works correctly
> when queing 8bit messages with different charsets.

Indeed.