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M6 Release Notes

These release notes, last updated June 1, 1999, describe installation instructions and known issues pertinent to the M6 release. These notes are updated as we receive feedback, so please check back for new information. You can also view an up-to-date list of fixed bugs. This release expires on July 1, 1999 at 00:01 am.

Installing the M6 Release Build

Unix Instructions

  1. Create a directory named "mozilla" and move the tar.gz file into the mozilla directory.


    2. mkdir mozilla ;
    mv mozilla*.tar.gz mozilla

  2. Change to the mozilla directory and untar the archive. This will create a directory called "package".


    3. cd mozilla ;
    gzip -dc mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-M6.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

  3. Change to the "package" directory.


    4. mv mozilla*.tar.gz ../ ;
    cd package

  4. Run mozilla with the run script:


    5. ./mozilla-apprunner.sh

Note: Bookmarks are temporarily reading the file "mozilla/package/res/rdf/bookmarks.html." instead of "~/.netscape/bookmarks.html". You can copy your bookmarks file as a workaround for now:

cp ~/.netscape/bookmarks.html mozilla/package/res/rdf/bookmarks.html

Mail Instructions for Unix

IMPORTANT: Please see the information in the mail/news pref document to correctly set up your mail preferences file.

Win32 Instructions

You will need a copy of WinZip. This is shareware available at http://www.winzip.com (also at http://www.download.com).

  1. Click once on the mozilla-win32.zip link. The file will be downloaded to your default folder.


  2. Click on the mozilla-win32.zip file to launch WinZip.


  3. After clicking "I Agree" to terms of WinZip shareware, click the Extract button in the WinZip tool bar. An x86 folder with application and associated files will be unzipped.


  4. Select Apprunner from x86 folder to launch the program.


    • Run "apprunner.exe" to use browser and mail.


    • Run "viewer.exe" to run only the gecko layout engine
Note: To use your current bookmarks with M6, you should overwrite the default M6 bookmark file with your own, for example, copy "C:\Program "files\Netscape\Users\<profile_name>\bookmark.htm" to "mozilla\package\res\rdf\bookmarks.html." Note that the file name changes slightly and that 'profile_name>' needs to be replaced by your user profile name.

Mail Instructions for Win32

IMPORTANT: Please see the information in the mail/news pref document to correctly set up your mail preferences file.

Mac OS Instructions

If you have StuffIt Expander™ installed and your browser is configured to use it:
  1. Click once on the mozilla-mac.sea.bin link. The file will be downloaded to your default folder (usually the desktop) and StuffIt™ will start up and convert it to mozilla-mac.sea for you. Then StuffIt will open up mozilla-mac.sea and convert it to a folder called mozilla-mac for you.

  2. Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "apprunner." (Note: you no longer need the .bin or .sea files.)
Note: If you try step one and your browser asks you what you want to do it's because you don't have StuffIt™ configured. In that case, just click Save and continue from Step #3 below.

If you do not have StuffIt Expander™ installed or your browser is not properly configured:

  1. Make sure you have StuffIt™ somewhere on your hard drive.

  2. Click and hold the mozilla-mac.sea.bin link.

  3. Choose "Save this link as...".

    4. You will see a file dialog box where you can select where you want to save the file (for example, your Desktop).

  4. Click the Save button.

  5. Double-click on the newly created icon "mozilla-mac.sea.bin".

  6. StuffIt™ will start up and simultaneously create a file "mozilla-mac.sea", and a folder called "mozilla-mac."

  7. Open the mozilla-mac folder and double-click the file "apprunner." (Note: you no longer need the .bin or .sea files.)
Note: To use your current bookmarks with M3, you should overwrite the default M3 bookmark file with your own. Copy your bookmark file, located in your profile directory (example: "{Hard Disk}:System Folder:Preferences:Netscape Users:{Profile Name}") into your "{Mozilla Binary Location}/res/rdf/" folder.

Mail Instructions for Macintosh

IMPORTANT: Please see the information in the mail/news pref document to correctly set up your mail preferences file.

Files Created or Used

Windows
user/ $windir/ $%TMPDIR%/
prefs.js (Preferences file (used))
cache/ (cache directory)
cookies.txt (cookies file)
*cookperm.txt (used to selectively accept/reject cookies)
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
signons.tbl and signonsx.tbl (logins and passwords file store)		 mozregistry.dat (the Mozilla registry) localstore.rdf (the Mozilla registry)
Unix
user/ ~/.mozilla/ /tmp/localstore
prefs50.js in ~/.mozilla/[profile] (preferences file (use))
Cache in ~/.mozilla/[profile](cache directory)
cookies (cookies file)
*cookperm (used to selectively accept/reject cookies)
FieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaConcat.tbl (files for auto form filling)
SchemaValue.tbl (files for auto form filling)
URLFieldSchema.tbl (files for auto form filling)
signons and signonsx (logins and passwords file store)		 registry (the Mozilla registry) localstore.rdf
Mac
TBA TBA TBA

*Note:"cookperm.txt" ("cookperm" on Unix) is a file used to selectively accept cookies from certain sites and not from others. It is used only if you set your preferences so you see a warning before accepting cookies. To do that, hand edit the prefs.js file to include:


    user.pref ("network.cookie.rememberAboutCookies", true);

Limited Support Features


Available Navigator Functionality
Functionality Description Comments
Back, Forward, Reload
Location Field You can browse by entering URLs
Various Menu Commands Menus do work, but many commands are not hooked up. Menus items that do work include: File menu: New Browser Window, New > Blank Page / Page using Template ... / Page using Draft ..., Quit; Go menu; Bookmarks menu (except Add commands)
Toolbars Toolbars display above and below content window, most buttons working though a couple are not hooked up to execute a command. No toolbar hiding or moving enabled yet.
Downloadable chrome You can dynamically change the chrome (apply new skins and new content) in M6 with the following caveats:
(1) Only Navigator is using the new chrome URLs. Messenger hasn't made the switchover yet.
(2) Changes aren't persistent yet, so if you change the skin, the change won't be remembered.
(3) The window doesn't dynamically refresh (once the window manager is further along, it will). In order to see your changes, you need to open up a new window after running the script to set the new skin. 		See the sample code in section 9 of the downloadable chrome spec
Link Buttons Buttons that simply link to a web address, including the N brand button, Home, My Netscape.
Access Personal Toolbar Links in Personal Toolbar are displayed and can be used Can't add or edit
Access Bookmarks Access Bookmarks through Bookmarks menu, can't add or edit. Can load your current bookmarks
file. See instructions under platform installations.
Access via Manage
Bookmarks Window		 Can open and close folders, one click to launch bookmarked URL in new toolbar-less window. File menu > New Window command also works.
Status Display Toolbar beneath content area, status during loading of URLs.


Available Mail/News Functionality
Functionality Description
Start Mail Run Apprunner and bring up the three-pane mail window
Get New Mail Download and display contents of local mail folders; POP
Handle SMTP SMTP protocol works; send a message (note: on send, the compose message window doesn't close)
Display Message News: Go to the "demos" menu and display a news article.
Mail: Go to the "demos" menu and select several messages from your Inbox. The message content is displayed in the message (lower right) pane.
Display Folder List Local mail folders are displayed in the folder (left-hand) pane.
Delete Message Delete a message using the Delete toolbar button.
Edit/Send Text Message Bring up the compose window by clicking the New Msg button, type some text, and send.
Sorting -- Thread Pane Sorting works for Subject, Sender, Status, and Date.
Move/Copy Messages You can move one message at a time.
Read Attachments in Messages Attachments can be displayed in the message pane.
Post message to newsgroup Using the compose window, post a message to a newsgroup. Currently, you can only post to newsgroups on news://news.mozilla.org (#6655)
Display news hosts and subscribed newsgroups Using the prefs and the newsrc files (and if needed, the fat or NewsFAT files), populate the folder pane with news hosts and subscribed newsgroups.
Display News articles in thread pane When you click on a newsgroup, show the message subject, date, etc. in the thread pane.
Display Message News Click on a message in the thread pane and the message content is displayed in the message pane.
Get News Select a newsgroup in the folder pane and click on "Get Msg" to download any new news articles.

Additional Mail Functionality

All Platforms:

You can set news.mozilla.org as your news host, and post messages to newsgroups on this host. Posting to newgroups on other news hosts is not yet implemented. (bug 6655)

The multiple POP accounts feature is available for you to try out. In your preferences file, add another account name to this line:

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.accounts", "account1,account2");

You will need to have identity and server information for the second account. For example:

user_pref("mail.account.account2.identities", id2"); user_pref("mail.account.account2.server", "server2");

where id2 and server2 preference lines exist and point to actual servers, etc.

Win32 and Linux:

You can bring up the Address Book and see the UI. However, the data is hardcoded at this time and you cannot make any address book entry changes or additions.

Mac OS:

Address Book is not implemented in M6.



Available Gecko Functionality
Functionality Description Comments
HTML 4.0 Done except bugs.
Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1) Features 98% done; bug-fixing remains.
Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) Positioning, tables, selectors done. No support is committed for final release, but some features are already working and will likely be enabled.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 0 Done.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 HTML 90% done.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 JavaScript event model 80% done.
Extensible Markup Language (XML) James Clark expat parser in; documents parse.
Simple XLink and HTML Namespaces done.
XML + CSS1 Working.

Known Issues

  • The browser window keeps popping up to the front. You can suppresss this problem by turning off notifications. (bug 6892)

    1. Edit res/rdf/flash-registry.rdf and remove the following lines:

      <RDF:li>
      <!-- The Tinderbox Flash -->
      <RDF:Description
      about="http://cvs-mirror.mozilla.org/
      webtools/tinderbox/showbuilds.cgi?tree=
      SeaMonkey&amp;flash=1">
      <NC:poll-interval>60</NC:poll-interval>
      </RDF:Description>
      </RDF:li>

    2. Edit res/rdf/sidebar-browser.rdf and remove the following lines:

      <RDF:li>
      <RDF:Description ID="tinderbox">
      <NC:title>&sidebar.tinderbox.label;</NC:title>
      <NC:content>http://cvs-mirror.mozilla.org/
      webtools/tinderbox/showbuilds.cgi?tree=
      SeaMonkey&amp;panel=1</NC:content>
      </RDF:Description>
      </RDF:li>


  • Issues related to Profiles:

    • IMPORTANT: All the information regarding profiles is stored in the registry file. When you check out a new build, make sure you delete the following items before you install, build, and run the new executable:

      • Windows mozregistry.dat ( c:\winnt or c:\windows or equivalent),
      • Mac OS Mozilla Registry (System Folder:Preferences),
      • Linux registry (~/.mozilla/)

      Not deleting these might cause inconsistencies.

    • The ProfileManager feature has been added. You open Profile Manager with the command line argument : -ProfileManager. The Profile Manager user interface appears, supporting creating a new profile, and deleting and renaming existing profiles. When you finish any of the tasks you can click Exit to quit the Profile Manager. In M7, you will be able to click a Start Communicator button to start appRunner with a selected profile.

    • A profile named 'default' is created in addition to the new profile created by the Create Profile wizard. The next version of the Profile wizard will start using 'default' and eliminate the requirement of having at least two profiles ('default' plus a user-generated profile). (bug 6683)

    • The mail server, user name, and other mail related preferences that you set up through the Create Profile wizard are not reflected back in any prefs50.js file. To use mail, you must manually set up your prefs50.js file, following the directions in the "mozilla mail/news prefs" document. Then copy your prefs50.js file to the location where your new profile is created after using the Profile Manager. If you have previously used Messenger and have all your mail preferences set, just copy the prefs50.js to the profile location/directory.


  • Clicking OK or Cancel in the Preference dialog may cause the browser to crash. (bug 5844)


  • Visited links don't show up in a different color. (bug 3437)


  • Opening multiple browser windows causes unpredictable results. Any URL entered into a new browser window affects only the first window. Closing multiple windows in the wrong order can cause a crash.


  • The Sidebar may appear collapsed when you first launch Apprunner. The Sidebar collapses when you resize a window.


  • Loading problems (possible crash or freeze) sometimes occur on pages that contain applets.


  • You cannot copy and paste in the Location bar.


  • Several problems are under investigation for the URL http://my.netscape.com. My Netscape is diverted to the Netscape home page on all platforms.


  • Within Viewer, many options within the Debug & Tools menu items are not currently working or produce unpredictable results.


  • If you have installed the latest JRE 1.2 from Sun Microsystems, you may crash at startup if the Java plugin is present. To fix this, remove the following dlls from the Plugins folder located in your 4.5 Communicator directory: npjava32.dll, npjava12.dll and npjava11.dll.


  • None of the JavaScript window.xxx() functions work with AppRunner windows. Windows can be opened using the ToolkitCore, but those windows don't play well with most of the JavaScript properties and methods.


  • "javascript:" is not working.


  • The following toolbar and menu items are either not fully functional or disabled:


    • The Back button doesn't work with manually entered URLs or URLs accessed through bookmarks


    • The Stop button fails intermittently


    • The Close menu item doesn't work (use the close box to close windows)


    • Print (toolbar button & menu item) and Print Preview fail intermittently


  • Keyboard shortcuts/command keys are not available for most menu items with the exception of the following for the mail compose and editor window: Ctrl-C (copy), Ctrl-V (paste), Ctrl-Z (undo). and Ctrl-Y(redo) and their Mac OS equivalents. The old Unix equivalents (using Alt- instead of Ctrl-) don't work; use Ctrl- .


  • Information about preferences related to saving username/password or form data:

    • To see a warning prompt before saving username/password or form data, set the following preference (by hand) in your prefs.js file:
      • user_pref("wallet.useDialogs", true);

      This pref is false by default, so saving will be done silently. This is done because there currently are no dialog boxes and the warning prompt would occur in the console window.

    • To suppress saving of form data altogether, set the following preference (by hand) in your prefs.js file:
      • user_pref("wallet.captureForms", false);

      This preference is true by default.

    • To supress saving of username/password, set the following preference (by hand) in your prefs.js file:
      • user_pref("network.singon.rememberSignons", false);

      This preference is true by default.


  • Windows only:


    • You may not be able to subsequently enter text into any compose window after the first try, due to editor timing problems.


    • Links on pages that use CSS do not work.


    • If you have a second video display monitor connected to your computer, links displayed on that monitor will not work.


    • Selecting the Print option causes crashes.


    • Preferences now load, but are not completely functional.


    • The CSS property "bgcolor" does not work.


    • The Wallet feature does not work correctly.


  • Mac OS only:


    • Increasing allocated memory to greater than 35 MB causes Apprunner to crash on launch.


    • There is unexpected behavior on the Mac when sidebar categories are selected. Expected behavior: Clicking once on a category should select it, and clicking twice should open it. Actual behavior: Sometimes a single click opens a category, and when this happens the previous category is highlighted after the single-clicked category opens.


    • If an included .css file is missing, the application will crash.


    • Cookies are not yet ready.


  • Linux only:


    • The Back and Forward buttons do not work for manually entered URLs.


    • Java is not yet implemented.


    • If the fonts are too small in your environment, it may be possible to alleviate this by setting a preference in Mozilla. Add a line like the following to the preferences file (~/.mozilla/prefs50.js):
      user_pref("browser.screen_resolution", 120);

      This sets the dpi to 120. If you set the pref to zero (0), Mozilla will use the X server's dpi value. If the pref is not set, it uses the default value of 96.

      There is some info about setting the X server's DPI value at http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html.

      If your fonts are still too small (or too large) after setting the DPI correctly, you can adjust the font size as follows:

      setenv GECKO_FONT_SIZE_FACTOR 1.5

      Note that the latter only affects fonts. The screen_resolution preference affects anything that specifies absolute size (e.g. CSS "pt" points).

    • Bug 4103: On Linux, a crash occurs if you:


      1. Start apprunner.


      2. Select "File / New Browser Window."


      3. Close a window.


      4. Select "File / New Browser Window." a second time.


  • Solaris only:


    • The Copy command in the browser's Edit menu is not working. (bug 6253)

Known Issues in Mail and News

  • If your prefs50.js file is configured for multiple POP accounts, and the host names for both accounts go to the same server name, only one account will show up when you start Messenger. (bug 5752)


  • See also the information on the prefs50.js file, earlier in this document.

  • After you send a message, the compose window does not close automatically. Close the compose window manually after you send a message. Otherwise, you may get a crash on subsequent sends using the same compose window. (bug 6914)

  • When you select an unread message with the message pane collapsed, the message is marked as read. (bug 6485)


  • After an IMAP connection is inactive for more than 30 minutes, selecting a message crashes the system. If you are not going to use Seamonkey Messenger for a period of time, you should exit the application. This will be fixed in a later milestone. (bug 6794)


  • Marking news messages read and unread is not working at this time. (bug 6652)

  • Due to optimizing performance in displaying headers (bug 7002), Messenger temporarily does not show the message counts in the folder pane when parsing a mailbox folder, and doesn't increase them when copying or getting new mail. This also applies to News messages. IMAP mail may not be affected. (bug 7010)

  • Due to optimizing performance in displaying headers (bug 7002), unread messages don't show up as bold in the thread pane until you move your mouse over them. This does not affect the message's state if you select an unread message to read it. This is a temporary problem and will be addressed in the next release. (bug 7012)

  • If you have local folders with many saved messages (hundreds or thousands), don't point the Mail application at your actual local folder hierarchy. All folders reparse at startup, and vast quantities of memory could be consumed if your total number of messages is high.


  • Sorting affects your ability to perform operations on messages. If you sort your messages first, operations on messages may not work, including deleting, copying, marking messages read, and other operations involving the affected code area. (bug 6670)


  • Vcards in mail are not fully functional and may cause failures when clicked.


  • Mac OS only:

    • The message dates are not displayed in the thread pane. This will be fixed in the next release. Workaround: view a message's date in the message pane after you select the message. (bug 6680)


    • Accessing the menu item Edit | Account Manager will result in a crash. This will be fixed in the next release. (bug 6996)


    • When you move a message, headers aren't copied into the destination folder. The message is copied, but you won't be able to see the results until the next time you start Messenger/Apprunner. (bug 6975)

  • Linux only:

    • In the mail compose window, pressing the backspace key may cause a string of text to be duplicated. (bug 5867)


  • Linux only: In Messenger, text under the toolbar buttons is not readable. For a workaround, see http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html.


  • Issues in the Mail Compose window:


    • The cursor does not appear in the message field until you begin typing.


    • If you are using plain text (instead of HTML) for messages, you may need to press Enter twice at the end of a line to move the cursor to the next line.


    • The received message does not wrap lines, so you may want to embed hard returns in your messages.


    • Messages may contain either too much vertical white space or not enough.


    • Windows only: Certain characters (! % " ' ` # $ and &) are not displayed in the mail compose window when typed, and will not appear after sending. (bug 6442)

M6 International Issues

For updated information on features, fonts, and testing for Internationalization, visit this page.

General:

  • If you have used an earlier version of Mozilla 5.0, we recommend that you delete the file called mozregistry.dat (Win) or registry (Unix/Mac) before you run M6 apprunner. (Don't delete Netscape Registry file for Mac, which is for Communicator 4.x.)  This will avoid unnecessary problems/crashes in some cases. Read the section in this document called Files Used or Created to find out where you can find these files.


  • Also read the Installation instructions for your platform carefully in this document.

Browser:

  • HTML Meta Charset support: has been greatly improved! There is no longer need to reload after a page has displayed. If a page has a correct Meta Charset tag, it will be displayed correctly on the first load.


  • On Mac: Multi-font rendering code has been re-written to improve on display performance. We would like people to seriously look at web pages with M6. We are very interested in performance/speed issues in loading with M6. If there are performance issues, write to us.


  • View | Character Set menu:  You can switch to different encoding when encountering a page which does not have a  meta charset tag.  You will not see a checkmark next to the menu item yet , however.


    • On Mac, some menu items were dimmed in M5 due to the limitation on the number a Mac menu can carry. This problem was fixed in M6 and now all the menu items are visible and enabled.


    • The list is currently too long and unwieldy -- overall charset menu specs are under consideration.


      • On Unix, there is no scrollable menu yet in GTK. Thus the Character set menu items may not be all visible if your monitor screen size is 17 or 15 inches. For those people, we would like to offer temporary workaround with reorganized menus.  These modifications on navigator.xul, mailshell.xul, and msgcompose.xul can be found here.  They have been tested to work on a 15-inch monitor screen. Please use the ".txt" files which contain just the International menu modifications for each of the .xul files. The .xul files there were from the 5/21/99 Linux build and posted simply as an example of how the whole thing looks.


      • Alternatively you can edit these files yourself to suit your needs using what you find at the above site as an example. Look for a section which begins: <menu name="Default Character Set"> or  <menu name="Character Set"> and place the Character set items you want to the top of the list. You will find the 3 files to modify in the locations below:


        • Starting at where the apprunner binary is located: ../res/samples/navigator.xul


        • Starting at where the apprunner binary is located: ../res/mailnews/messenger/mailshell.xul


        • Starting at where the apprunner binary is located: ../res/mailnews/compose/msgcompose.xul


    • On some NT4 machines, reloading may not work. This problem will be addressed when the new NetLib code becomes available.  As a workaround:


      • If you have one of these machines, switch the View | Character Set menu before you go to the next site. Hopefully you know ahead of time what charset the page is using.)  If you experience the same problem of not being able to reload, please let us know and provide info on whether or not your problem is reproducible.


  • Improving muilti-font rendering on Win:


    • Some bugs fixes were performed.


    • No additional converters for M6:


  • On Linux -- because we have not completed GFX Multi-font rendering part yet, display works only for Latin1 and Japanese at the moment. Not much change from M4 here.



Editor:

  • Input method - on Windows, some improvements were made to make it easier to use Japanese IME. More improvements are coming.



Localizability:

  • Some do-it-yourself localization is now possible. Not much change in the following items from M5.


    • XUL/XML/RDF files assume the default charset to be in UTF-8. If you change UI strings to your favorite language, they should show OK as long as the localized files use UTF-8 charset. (You can change menus to Japanese, for example, in res/samples/navigator.xul file and then convert the file to UTF-8 charset.) The menu items generally cannot be in languages your system does not support, e.g.  no Japanese menu for US Windows is possible at the moment.


    • Limitation: you cannot use charsets other than UTF-8 yet since XML parser support of general entities in the external DTD files is yet to be done. Although it is possible to have resource files for Mozilla to be in charsets other than UTF-8, keep in mind that Mozilla will be standardizing on UTF-8 for  resource files.


Mail/News (Windows only):

  • Preferences file: prefs50.js


    • Mail (POP & IMAP) and News viewing does not work unless you have a correct prefs50.js file in the correct location for your platform. Read this page and set up the correct preferences before you do any mail testing. For the location of the prefs50.js file, read the installation instructions for your platform on this page - see above.


    • In addition to the general preferences items, international users should also add the following 3 lines to the prefs50.js. The first controls HTML/Plain Text mail option, the second and the third are musts for sending out properly MIME-encoded mail body and headers, respectively. If you want to send HTML mail, set the first options's value to "true". For M6, our default is Plain Text since HTML mail has problems for some languages. See below for more.


      • user_pref("mail.identity.id1.send_html", false);


      • user_pref("mail.strictly_mime", true);


      • user_pref("mail.strictly_mime_headers", true);


    • To get your POP mail working, it is best to have a small starter Inbox file in the Mail directory you specified in prefs50.js file. We have such a starter Inbox file for you here. Get this file called 5.0firstinbox and rename it to Inbox and put it in your Mail directory.


    • POP option is for leaving mail behind on the server after the messages have been downloaded from the server. We recommend that you use a test mail account for this purpose rather than using your regular mail account.


  • International Sorting in Thread pane headers: is now working. Sorting is done according to the sort default for the language of your operating system. Please test this for your language/OS and see if sorting is satisfactory.


  • International Date/Time format: is now working. It uses the default for your operating system's locale. The effect should be visible in the thread pane date/time headers. Please check out this features for your language/OS!


  • Multi-lingual mail viewing:  Not much change from M5.


    • If you have a multilingual font or several fonts which together cover the Unicode ranges (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean fonts + Pan-European fonts), we use them in displaying mail messages and headers for all the languages we support. We pay attention to the charset parameter in the Content-Type header and switch to an appropriate font. The Encoding menu is not needed to switch to different language views unless the message you're viewing is incorrectly labeled. If you would like a basic mono-weight multi-lingual font, you can get Bitstream Cyberbit font 2.0 here.


    • View | Character Set menu is currently not working to override wrong MIME charset label.  It can be used to view msgs which have no MIME charset specified, however.


    • On some Windows machines, for an unknown reason, Message Pane header and body display may go wrong for non-ASCII messages containing 8-bit headers and body. This problem is sporadic and on most machines we looked at, the problem does not occur at all.  If you encounter a reproducible set of steps, please let us know.


    • Attachments should be viewable if they are of the same charset as the main body of the mail. Other charsets are not supported yet.


  • View | Character Set menu for New Mail Compose window is now working for sending mail for many additional languages. Switch to the charset you want to compose a message in and then compose the message.  You will not see a checkmark next to the menu item yet , however. We need a lot of people testing different charsets we put in for M6!


  • Sending Latin 1 mail: Works in both HTML and Plain text.


    • Copy/paste accented characters into the headers and  body works


    • Keyboard input into headers (e.g. subject) also works for accented characters. Using the English keyboard, ALTGr + 0+Number Keypad method works, e.g. Right ALT key + 0232.


    • Make sure to switch the View | Character Set  to Latin 1 before you send out a message.


    • Basic MIME compliance is there: Header Q encoding, and Body QP encoding for accented characters.


  • Sending Japanese mail: works only in Plain text. HTML mail body disappears upon "send".


    • Basic/primitive Japanese input now works. The mail composer body can retain Japanese input.  Japanese input/copying  into Subject header does not work yet, however. We are awaiting the arrival of new Ender/Editor widgets for this feature.


    • Mail goes out in ISO-2022-JP. (The Kanji-in escape sequence is that of JISX0208-1976, however. )


    • Make sure to switch the View | Character Set  to Japanese (ISO-2022-JP) before you send out a message.


  • Sending other charset mail -- is now enabled. Please try out these new charsets! For example, UTF-8 is working now.


    • Though the mail text body can sense what keyboard you have selected and will switch font accordingly, there may be mapping bugs with some international keyboards and so there is no guarantee that correct characters will be input. Copy/paste may work better. Let us know what you find if you try this.


  • Reply/Forward: is basically working but there seem to be some display bugs in the new mail composer. You may not always see the characters displayed properly in  your language though mail general arrives correctly.


  • IMAP Mail: is working now, but not much international testing has been done to determine how well. You can change the server type to "imap" from "POP3" to indicate that the server in question is of IMAP type in your prefs50.js file.


  • Viewing News: is working. We have done some  international testing on this. In principle, multilingual news articles viewing should work if they have correct MIME charsets indicated in the articles. Be warned, however, that newsgroups postings are not always MIME-compliant and this could defeat our charset honoring mechanism.


Features that are not supported in M6:

  • No CJK IME support on Mac and Linux.


  • Linux can only view Latin and Japanese.


  • No Japanese Auto-Detect.


  • No posting non-ASCII forms data.


  • No CJK printing on Linux.


  • HTTP charset won't be handled.