Re: gnus should accept UTF8 even if UTF-8 is standard

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:49:21 +0200 Reiner Steib <address@hidden> wrote: 

RS> On Wed, Oct 15 2008, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
>> On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:39:41 +0900 Kenichi Handa <address@hidden> wrote: 
KH> Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> writes:
>>>> (define-coding-system-alias 'utf8 'utf-8)
>>>> (define-coding-system-alias 'UTF8 'utf-8)
>> 
KH> I agree that defining those aliases causes no problem.

RS> [ See <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/66962> for a
RS>   previous discussion on this topic. ]

RS> I seem to recall that (define-coding-system-alias 'utf8 'utf-8) might
RS> trigger Gnus into sending articles with "Content-type: text/plain;
RS> charset=utf8" which would be plain wrong [1][2].  But I'm not sure.

If it does we can fix it (maybe it can prefer the original coding system
before trying its aliases).  The general usage, regardless of Gnus and
the RFCs, is that these are valid synonyms for utf-8, so I think this is
the right thing to do.

RS> For the problem at hand (displaying incoming articles), the user can
RS> type `1 g utf-8 RET' (<menu-bar> <Article> <Display> <View as
RS> different encoding> <utf-8>) or add (utf8 . utf-8) to
RS> `mm-charset-synonym-alist'.

RS> If it becomes a more frequent mistake, we might add (utf8 . utf-8) to
RS> the default value `mm-charset-synonym-alist'.  I hesitate to pollute
RS> `mm-charset-synonym-alist' by adding entries for each and every pilot
RS> error.

It's not a pilot error at this point, the mangled names have been in
common usage for years...

Ted