You are currently viewing a snapshot of www.mozilla.org taken on April 21, 2008. Most of this content is highly out of date (some pages haven't been updated since the project began in 1998) and exists for historical purposes only. If there are any pages on this archive site that you think should be added back to www.mozilla.org, please file a bug.



International M10 Status Page



by Katsuhiko Momoi
Last Update: 10/14/99

This page tracks the progress of M10 International features.  By the time M10 is completed, this page should have all the completed M10 features and testing hints. If you are interested in what has been completed in the prior Milestone, visit the M9 international status and testing hints page.
 

M10 International features that have been completed:

General:

I18n Engineering and Milestone Tasks document is now available here.
I18n Beta 1 Feature Plan is now available here.
I18n Beta 1 Mail/News Functional specifications are now available here.
Localizing Mozilla document.
Bitstream Cyberbit Unicode font for Windows  (version 2.0) is available here. Read READMEFirst file for details before downloading the fonts.
Report international bugs: Use Bugzilla.
Questions and comments: I18n --> netscape.public.mozilla.i18n, L10n --> netscape.public.mozilla.l10n, Testing--> netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n

Preferences

  • Dealing with preferences has become much easier! With M10, Mozilla 5.0 offers you to migrate any Communicator 4.x profiles you have on your system. Choose an existing one from 4.x and a new one will be created for 5.0. The window for profile migration will appear the first time you start M10 build after the installation. If it does not, you can start with the profile manager: apprunner -installer (Unix & Win).  Mac users can start with the Mozilla Preferences file..
  • If you have used an earlier version of Mozilla 5.0, we recommend that you delete the file called mozregistry.dat (Win)/Mozilla registry (Mac)/registry (Unix) before you run M10 apprunner. (Don't delete Netscape Registry file for Mac, which is for Communicator 4.x.). We recommend this procedure because during M10, there has been a change in the way registry works and the old registry for M9 will not work well with M10. Read the section in the Release Notes called Files Used or Created to find out where you can find these files.
  • When you start M10 after having deleted mozregistry.dat or registry, you will be asked to create a new profile. If you name an existing profile, that profile will be used. Otherwise "Default" profile will be created. If this latter happens, you can replace the prefs.js file in the Default folder with the one from an existing profile directory. (Note that the default profile name changed from prefs50.js (of M8 and earlier) to prefs.js starting with M9.)
  • After a new orefs.js file is created, the apprunner may simply quit or crash. However, when you start it again, your new preference should be honored. The first time you start, not all UI in the side bar area in the Browser and Messenger windows may be drawn correctly. This is a known bug. The problem normally disappears when you simply quit and re-start the apprunner the second time.
  • Also read the Installation instructions for your platform carefully in this Release Notes.
Browser:
  • There have been steady improvement in stability and features that matter to international users in M10.
  • New GFX widget/Ender is now ON by default and thus requires no special setting in the prefs.js as was reported for M9. This means that all input areas now support non-ASCII character input including input using CJK IMEs. There are a few significant bugs left in M10, however, for inputting via CJK IME. Read the Editor section below for more information if you plan to use CJK IMEs.
  • M10 converter(s): There are no new converters in M10.  See here for a list of all the converters at M10. (Note: Not all menu items may be displayed in the Character Set menu for Windows and Unix clients because the menu does not scroll yet, but the charset you need can be enabled by simple modification of appropriate .xul and .dtd files. See below for details on how to modify these files.)
    • Unix charset testing:  As mentioned in the M7 Release Notes, the display for the supported charsets except Armenian, Thai, and Vietnamese should be working now.  We would like users to continue to look at various Unix charsets and file a bug if a problem is found. The list of the supported charsets at M10 can be found below. Please download the Unix binary and check out our support for these character sets. (Note: You need appropriate fonts to display these languages -- pcf.gz format on Linux. Visit this site for ISO and Cyrillic BDF fonts, and this site for multi-byte language fonts. For converting from BDF to PCF format fonts, use bdftopcf utility.)
  • EUC-TW bug: M10 has a bug which produces wrong display for EUC-TW (Traditional Chinese) pages. Big5 display is working, however.
  • Charset detection modules are now in the Browser Menu!
    • The charset detection modules for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, East Asian (CJK), Chinese (Simplified & Traditional Chinese), Ukrainian, and Russian are now in a menu below the Character Set menu.
    • You can select 1 charset detection module at a time. Once selected, the auto detection for the charsets of  language(s) you selected will be ON until you turn it OFF.
    • The charset detector will be engaged even when you have selected a Character Set explicitly via the Character Set menu. If you need to override the effect of the charset detector in effect, choose OFF, and then select a new Character Set from the Character Set menu. Please use the charset detector feature for a variety of web pages in the languages of your choice and let us know how we are doing. File a bug at Bugzilla or send your comments to netscape.public.mozilla.i18n or  netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
    • In M9, these charset detectors could be used only by prefs.js settings. This is no longer necessary since the charset detector menu fulfills exactly the same function.  The menu now controls what gets inserted into chardet_name of:

    • user_pref("intl.charset.detector", "chardet_name");

       
      If the charset detector is OFF, then chardet_name value will be empty. As reported before, unit testing also can be done via a utility called "Detectch.exe" found in the same directory as the "apprunner.exe" file. If you are interested in modifying the prefs.js for charset detector modules or use the command line utility, read the usage instruction here.
  • View | Character Set menu:
    • The Browser Character Set menu is now dynamic, i.e. created via a script. This is first of the series of steps we will be taking to make the Character Set menu completely dynamic and eventually accommodate new Character sets via a plug-in directory. The dynamic Character set menu will use the Extensibility Model as discussed in this document.
    • In M10, the dynamic menu is only for Browser and co-exists below the static Character Set menu. Both menus work in M10 and one of them is actually redundant and will be eventually eliminated. This is harmless, however. Character set menus in other components are still static at this point and you will see only one set of menus.
    • You can switch to different Character set upon encountering a page which does not have a  meta charset tag and which is not displaying correctly. If you happen to have a charset detector ON and if the display is failing, you need to first turn OFF the detector setting, and then try the Character Set menu. Otherwise, the charset detector's choice will always predominate over the manual menu selection. You will not see a checkmark next to the menu item yet, however.
  • View | Character Set menu Display problem workaround: The list currently contains 49 items and is too long and unwieldy -- overall charset menu specs are under consideration.
      • The Character set menus will be eventually a) scrollable and b) customizable via a menu. At M10, however, neither of these features has been checked in. For Unix and Windows clients, this presents a difficulty since the Character Set menu items may not be all visible on these platforms even if your monitor size is 21-inch. If you have this problem, we would like to suggest the following workaround ideas:
        • For languages for which the charset detection modules are available, choose one and see if that would not be sufficient for your viewing needs.
        • If you need to use the Character Set menu items and they are not visible on your screen, you can modify the Character Set menus to re-arrange the order of menu items.  Read this file to accomplish this workaround.
  • HTTP charset: We now support server-generated HTTP charset correctly. (The order of priority is: HTTP charset > Document Meta Charset > Browser Menu choice.)
  • View | Page Source: now works correctly for all charsets if 1) the page has a correct HTTP charset associated with it, or 2) the page has a correct document-based meta charset tag, or 3) the page has been correctly loaded with the use of a charset detector. One case where the source page viewing does not work correctly is when none of the conditions in 1) - 3) holds and the user has loaded the page correctly with the manual change of the Character Set menu.
  • CJK line breaking: has been improved in M10. All Kinsoku rules should be working now. Mozilla's line breaking implements specifications found in JIS X 4501 with some additional modifications. Read this news article posted to the newsgroup netscape.public.mozilla.i18n by Frank Tang for details.
  • Mac: Baltic display: ISO-8859-13: You may experience a problem in Baltic ISO-8859-13 display in that some of the uppercase characters may be missing the diacritical marks above them showing only the base characters. The same problem might also exist for Baltic ISO-8859-4 display.  See Bug 9165.
    • One Workaround:
      • 1) Install a Central European script bundle (CE) from this Apple file. (You need DiskCopy utility to mount this image). After you mount this disk image, rather than using the Installer, open the System file directory by double-clicking on it. In it, you will find among others, CE (script), Slovak (keyboard layout), and slovensk (keyboard layout). Drag these files to your current System Folder. Mac OS will then place them in the right places.
      • 2) Next, get the fonts for Central European from this Apple file. Once you mount this image file with DiskCopy, you will find a number of CE fonts. Drag and drop them onto your System Folder. Mac OS will then place them in an appropriate folder.
      • 3) After steps 1 and 2 are completed, re-start your Mac. You should now see ISO-8859-13 (also ISO-8859-4) characters correctly.
  • Java: Java Plug-ins are working now on Windows.
    • To get Java working on Mozilla, you need to take some extra steps as described below.
      • First get the JRE 1.2.2 or later from Javasoft. (JRE package may be included in Mozilla distribution also.) Install the package on your Windows.
      • Create a directory named plugins in the same directory where the apprunner resides.
      • Copy 3 files, npjava11.dll, npjava12.dll, and npjava13.dll, from the JRE's bin directory into the plugins directory you created in step 2.
      • Check the Java Plug-in Control Panel from Windows Start | Program menu. The following settings (no others) must be checked.
        • Basic: Java Plugin, Java Console (optional), Cache Jar in memory
        • Detailed/Advanced: Use Java Plugin as default, Just in time Compiler is on
        • Proxy: use the browser setting
        • Certificates: (none)
    • Currently due to a few bugs, a lot of applets simply will not run. Some string display applets do run and so far we have found none can actually display non-ASCII strings. If you have specific applets which deal with string display, write your finding to netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
Editor: Anyone who uses non-ASCII input in Browser, Messenger, etc. should read this section. For IME specifications, see this document by Tague Griffith.
  • CJK IME handling: has been improved and has gained more stability in general, particularly on Windows and Macintosh.
  • Basic IME support on Unix: has been enabled for M10 thanks to Sun engineers. It is not working perfectly yet but we now have at least a primitive IME functioanlity working on Unix. We tested Japanese input under Red Hat 6.0 + kinput2 + wnn4. We need your help on testing other Unix platforms and other languaeg IMEs!
    • Important: There are some bugs, however, and you need to know the workarounds to see how this is working. See below for details.
    • Important: When M10 was released, UNIX IME support was not checked into M11 (tip). Thus, we had a situation where M10's IME function performs better than M11 for several days, but see the next item ...
    • M11 update: On Oct. 14, 1999, we checked IME fixes into the M11 tip -- they had already been checked into an M10 branch and released as M10. Thus starting with the Oct. 15, 1999 Linux  build, you should be able to use X IME with M11 builds as you were with the M10 release. There are some critical bugs, however, we will announce in netscape.public.mozilla.i18n and in the M11 Testing updates page when these bugs get fixed.
  • Help test (Japanese) IME on Unix!: We need the following kinds of testing for Japanese IME  and others on Unix. Please send your comments to netscape.public.mozilla.i18n or file a bug using Bugzilla Bug Management System for Mozilla.
    • Testing on other platforms -- our reference platform was Red Hat 6.0.
    • Testing other XIM-based Japanese IMEs (both public domain and commercial ones such as Wnn6+xwnmo) to see how we are doing. We used kinput2 + wnn4 as our testing environment. We need input from people using other IMEs and servers. Write to us also if you can confirm other IMEs are working. If there are special conditions to be followed, include that information also.
    • We would also like to hear from users of IMEs for Chinese and Korean. Write to: netscape.public.mozilla.i18n about your findings.
  • Critical IME bugs -- you should know the following workarounds to use IMEs effectively.
    • On all platforms:
      • If you turn on an IME and insert a cursor into a text field of any kind and start inputting multi-byte characters, e.g. Japanese, the apprunner will crash. Workaround: Before starting to input via the IME, insert 1 ASCII character such as a space character into the field. Then turn on the IME and input CJK characters. This will avert a crash.  By the way, after inputting Japanese characters, you can then delete the ASCII character by backspacing over it.
    • On Unix: In addition to the CJK crash bug, you need to be aware of  the following bugs for Unix IME.
      • In addition to the crash bug as described immediately above, you need to be aware of the following bugs on Unix.
      • The over-the-spot position of the input area is not well-aligned when you first start inputting character. It is positioned above the top edge of the current window. You will not see the characters well until the first input has been committed. Once the initial string has been committed, the next input process brings down the IME input area to the visible position.
      • In form input field, no CJK characters can be committed when you press the "Enter" key, i.e. the field displays no input.  In normal text field, committed input is displayed OK, however. Because of some critical problems, the commit key action for IME has been disabled in thia case for M10. This will be fixed shortly in M11 but until then, you might be able to use the following workaround to retain the input. Taking Japanese kinput2 as an example,
        • First, before turning on the IME, insert one ASCII space or character into the form field to avoid a crash.
        • Next, turn on the IME (e.g. kinput2) and position the cursor next to the 1st character.
        • Start inputting Japanese and commit characters by pressing "Enter". You will not see characters at this point.
        • Then when you are ready, just turn OFF the IME. You should now see the characters you just typed in.
        • Note: This workaround has been tested on only kinput2 and Wnn4 for Japanese. So far we have received a note saying that the workaround is not effective with Chinese Big5 xcin 2.5. Thus it is quite possible that not all IMEs retain the committed input in the way kinput2 does when the IME is turned off.
  • Form Password field input bug:
    • Due to a bug, the form password input is not concealed when you engage CJK IMEs. To avoid this bug, turn off the IME and then input a password. Only this mode will work OK for the password field. The Half-width Alphanumeric mode (e.g. Japanese IME) normally works like the direct input mode but for this bug, it is not effective and reveals the password input as you enter characters.
  • Copy/paste in Non-ASCII strings: Basic intra-application copy/paste is now working for non-ASCII strings.
    • You can copy/cut and paste within the same application
      • within the same same text area
      • from one text area to another text area (e.g. from HTML to Plain Text editor text area)
      • from one text field to another text area (e.g. from Mail compose subject header to body text area)
    • Known bugs: Copy/cut and paste for non-ASCII string  is not working in the following areas
      • from one application to another
      • from one text area to another text field (e.g. Mail compose text area to the subject field)
      • from one text field to another (e.g. from subject field to the "To" " field.)
      • within the same text field (e.g. copy a string in Browser location window and paste into another position in the same location window.)
  • Saving with Editor Character Set menu: On a new document, change the encoding to the one you would like to save the document in and then use the File | Save as  menu to save the editted document in that chracter set. Bugs or comments to: Bugzilla or netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n. Here are some known bugs.
    • Currently this menu does not reload a document. It can only be used to save a document into a different charset at the save time. This menu will be re-worked extensively later.
    • There is a bug in that when the same-named document is saved, the new document not replace the old one.
  • Summary of what has been enabled up to M 10:
    • CJK IMEs on Windows and Mac.
    • IME on Unix enabled. (Known to work for Japanese. Other languages not tested.)
    • Keyboard support for many one-byte languages on Windows: Please file a bug if you find a problem in your language or keyboard.
    • Keyboard support for many one-byte languages on Mac: Roman Australian,  Brazilian, British, Canadian-CSA, Canadian-ISO, Canadian-French, Dutch, dv-Dvorak, dq-Dvorak-Qwerty, Finnish, Flemish, French, French-numerical, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Spanish-ISO, Swedish, Swiss French, Swiss German, Cyrillic Bulgarian, Cyrillic-Qwerty, Russian, Ukrainian.
Localizability:
  • Localization framework has been explicitly defined:
    • We have published a guideline for localization. Anyone interested in localizing Mozilla into a native language should read this document carefully.
    • Here are some basic ideas to keep in mind when localizing Mozilla.
      • Do not localize .xul files directly. All localizations must take place in corresponding  .dtd files or property files.
      • Most localizable strings have now been extracted from .xul into .dtd (or property files) files. The .dtd files are found under  ../chrome/component_name/locale/en-US directory. They match the names of the corresponding .xul files which are placed under:../chrome/component_name/content/default directory.  (Note: Some samples of property files, which can also be localized, are found under ../res directory but there are currently only a few examples of this type of files.)
      • If you create a .xul file then you need to extract localizable string into a corresponding  .dtd file. (If you're creating Mozilla UI via a script rather than by a static .xul file, then you need to extract them into a property file.) To extract .XUL entities into DTD files for localization, read this document.
      • 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 ..chrome/navigator/locale/en-US/navigator.dtd file using the method suggested above and then convert the DTD file to UTF-8.) 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.
      • All non-ASCII .dtd and .property files must be in UTF-8 encoding, which is Mozilla's default encoding for resource files. You do not need to explicitly mark the resource files with this encoding, Mozilla will assume that they are in UTF-8 if there are no charset tags.
      • UTF-8 conversion utility:
        • Use convenient converter utilities such as "uniconv" (for Windows and Unix) or "native2ascii" utility included in the latest JDK.
        • New Character Set conversion utility!: Mozilla now has its own Character Encoding conversion utility (courtesy of Frank Tang) in the binary distribution. It is called nsconv and is installed in the same directory as your apprunner executable. You can use any Character set names recognizable to Mozilla in the use of utility. Here's the basic command line for using this utility:
          • nsconv -f source_charsetname -t target_charsetname source_filename new_filename
          • You can use the charset names you see within the parentheses of  the Character Set menu for source_charsetname and target_charsetname, e.g. iso-8859-1, Shift_JIS, Big5, EUC-KR, etc.
  • DTD/XML encoding definition is now supported -- thus  you can use charsets other than UTF-8 as the resource file charset, but using charset other than UTF-8 is not recommended for Mozilla localization. We assume UTF-8 as default. Cf. Bug 4431.


Mail/News (Testing done on Windows only):

  • Preferences file: prefs.js (Note: Up to M8, the Preferences file was named prefs50.js. This file name must be prefs.js instead for all later Milestones.)
    • Preferences changes for M10:
      • There have been a number of changes affecting mail related preference settings. Read this section first before you look at Mail specific preferences.
    • SMTP sever setting:
      • In M10, the outgoing mail server settings have been changed. If you have not done so already, after you start up Messenger, choose Edit | Account Setup ... and set the outgoing (SMTP) server and user name. This needs to be done only once but without setting, you will not be able to send out mail. If you want to learn more about how SMTP setup and multiple mail mail accounts, read this document.
    • Password: Starting with M9, Mozilla now ignores the password provided in the prefs.js file. You will be asked to provide a password via a dialog prompt. If you want Mozilla to remember your password, insert this line into the prefs.js file.

    •  
        user_pref("mail.server.server1.remember_password", true);

        where "1" in "server1" should be changed to match your server number.

    • Mail (POP & IMAP) and News viewing does not work unless you have a correct prefs.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 prefs.js file, read the installation instructions for your platform on this page - see above.
    • In addition to the general preferences items, international users might want to pay attention to the following lines in the prefs.js. The first controls HTML/Plain Text mail option, the second and the third control sending out properly MIME-encoded mail body and headers, respectively. If you want to send Plain text mail, set the first option's value to "false".  The MIME options are to be touched only if you need to test non-MIME mail send. Here are the relevant prefs.js settings.
      • user_pref("mail.identity.idX.compose_html", true);  <-- default is "true"
        • ... where "X" in 'idX' should be replaced by a number which corresponds to your account identities number, e.g. id0, id1, etc.
        • The above is for HTML mail send. For Plain Text mail send, change the value to "false".
        • Prior to M8, this was controlled by:  user_pref("mail.identity.idX.send_html", false);  <-- this has been obsoleted.
      • MIME-related:
        • user_pref("mail.strictly_mime", true);  //No need to set this line unless you want a false value for special testing.
        • user_pref("mail.strictly_mime_headers", true);      //No need to set this line unless you want a false value for special testing.
  • Downloading POP mail for the first time:
    • If the POP Mail directory designated in your prefs.js file contains no existing folder (i.e. new), it may require patience to get your mail downloaded for the first time.  POP mail downloading could be slow and depending on how many messages the server has, it may take 5-10 minutes for the downloading to complete. We recommend not using an account which has more than a few hundred messages in it. The performance in this area has improved much since M9 and so Mozilla should be able to handle a mailbox with a few hundred messages without much trouble, however.
    • The POP option is for leaving mail behind on the server after the messages have been downloaded.
  • How various mail-related international functions are working at M10:
    • Address Book: now supports Non-ASCII (including CJK) input, editing and display. The following features are working.
      • Non-ASCII Input into card fields
      • List View pane -- proper international sorting
      • Each card view pane -- displays non-ASCII strings
      • Can re-edit existing cards with non-ASCII entries.
      • New message button -- quotes non-ASCII names correctly
      • Composer Address Picker -- now select non-ASCII names correctly.
      • Address auto-completion is now working but for ASCII display only. If an Address Book entry contains non-ASCII characters, they are not displayed correctly.
    • Multi-lingual mail viewing: This is working on all platforms.
      • Multilingual viewing is working on IMAP, POP3 and NNTP servers as long as the messages contain properly MIME-encoded headers and body with correct charset parameters.
      • View | Character Set menu is currently not working to override wrong MIME charset label, or view msgs which have no MIME charset (except for Latin 1) specified.
      • 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 Character Set 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.
      • Viewing News: is working. Multilingual news articles viewing works 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.
    • Viewing non-ASCII attachments: generally working but there are some bugs
      • Plain-text attachment sent from M10 has an incorrect Content-type header and cannot be viewed inline by M10. Plain text attachments from other MIME-complaint mailers are displayed correctly.
      • Attachments should be viewable if they are of the same charset as the main body of the mail or if it has explicit charset parameter in the attachment headers.  If an attachment lacks charset parameter info and if its charset does not match that of the main body, that attachment cannot be viewed currently even when the Character menu is changed to match the charset of the attachment. A charset detector as discussed above is not effective for attachments.
      • Multiple attachments in different languages: can now be viewed without changing the charset menu if each attachment's header contains a correct charset parameter.
      • Japanese attachments auto-detection improved further for M10: The Japanese auto-detection module has been further improved. Display of non-ASCII attachment names is also working.
        • The auto-detection module set for the Browser via its new charset detector menu will also work to detect the charset of mail attachments. See above on how to set an charset detection module.
        • Currently there is a bug which corrupts EUC-JP attachment display. To work around this problem, we have put in a mail specific charset detector which only works in Messenger. (Note: Eventually this detector will be removed when the EUC bug is fixed.) When this is set, this detector rather than the Browser detector will be used in Messenger.  This detector will be ON even when the Browser detector is OFF. For those wishing to view Japanese EUC files attached dto mail messages, we recommend that this workaround be put in place. There is no UI for this but this is how you can use it:
          • In the pres.js file, insert the following line:
            • user_pref("mail.charset.detector", "jaclassic");   <-- this is basically a detector module used for Communicator 4.x.
    • View | Character Set menu and thread pane reloading:
      • The menu change causes the thread pane to reload properly. This makes it possible to display non-MIME-encoded headers which don't match the current Character Set menu setting.  Headers, body, and attachments without MIME charset information may not be displayed properly, however, even if the Character Set menu is changed.
    • IMAP Latin 1 folder name: displays OK. Multi-byte folder names (e.g. CJK) don't work yet.
    • International Sorting in Thread pane headers:  now works well in the Subject and Sender headers on all platforms. Sorting should be done according to the sort default for the language of your operating system. Date/Time sorting is also working as it should.
    • International Date/Time format:  now works for NT4, Win9x, and Mac for all locales. The format will be used according to your OS's date/time format setting.
  • Sending Latin 1 & Japanese attachments:
    • Important: M10 has a bug which freezes the Messenger when a file with more than 8K in size is attached. This has been resolved in M11 but M10  contains this bug.
    • File | Send Page is not working currently.
  • Sending messages in other languages: View | Character Set menu for New Mail Compose window is 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. Le us know how we are in sending messages in other languages. Send your report to: netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
  • Composing CJK mail messages:
    • Important: There is an Editor bug (for all platforms) which leads to a crash easily if a workaround is not taken when inputting with an IME. Read the section on Editor for a workaround suggestion.
  • Composing Latin 1 mail messages:
    • In Reply/Forward, quoting of Q-encoded Latin 1 Subject header and QP-encoded body text fails in display in the Message pane. (Quoting in the Subject field itself works correctly). Latin 1 headers encoded with CERs are quoted correctly. Since Q-encoded or QP-encoded strings are used primarily in plain text mail, that is where you will encounter this bug normally.
  • Domain Name completion: is now working. An user ID only input will be automatically supplied with the default domain address.
  • Message Send Status summary for Latin 1 and Japanese: No indicates that the functionality is not working well.

  •  
    Message send feature
    Latin 1 (ISO-8859-1)
    Japanese (iso-2022-jp)
    Header (subject, address)
    Yes
    Yes (M9 bug was fixed)
    Body - HTML
    Yes (HTML entities are used for 8-bit characters)
    Yes
    Body - plain
    Yes
    Yes
    Reply/forward header
    Yes
    Yes
    Reply/forward body html
    Yes -- POP mail, IMAP, NEWS Yes -- POP mail, IMAP, NEWS
    Reply/forward body plain
    Yes - IMAP, POP, News.  Yes - IMAP, POP, News
    Send/View Attachment(s)
    Yes (Send - local file only..) Yes (Send - local file only.)
    Copy/paste into headers and body
    Yes (accented characters copy OK) Yes  (from headers to body) No (from body to headers)
Notes on Composing Latin 1 and Japanese Mail messages:
    • Composing Latin 1 Mail:
      • Copying/pasting accented characters into the headers and  body works
      • Keyboard input into headers (e.g. subject) also works for accented characters. Using the English keyboard for Latin 1 high-bit input, ALTGr + 0+Number Keypad method works, e.g. Right ALT key + 0232.
      • Make sure to switch the View | Character Set  to your chosen Character set name before you send out a message.
      • Basic MIME compliance is there: Header Q encoding, and Body QP encoding for accented characters.
    • Composing Japanese mail: works both for HTML and Plain text mail now.
      • Basic Japanese input works for body.  Japanese input/copying  into the headers and body also work.
      • Mail goes out in ISO-2022-JP.  Header is B-encoded. (The Kanji-in escape sequence is now correct -- that of JISX0208-1990/83. )
      • Make sure to switch the View | Character Set  to Japanese (ISO-2022-JP) before you send out a message.
    • Sending other charset mail -- is enabled. Please try out these new charsets! For example, Central European, Cyrillic, Greek, UTF-8, etc.
      • 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.  If you find a bug with your charset/language, please file it here.
Mail/News (for Mac and Linux)
  • We don't currently test these platforms for international features. Though we cannot vouch for accuracy, many of our Windows features should be available on these platforms also.  Linux mail is somewhat behind Windows and Mac, but catching up fast.

Features that are not supported in M10:

  • No CJK printing on Linux.

  •  
List of Charset Converters available at M10:

Single-byte:

  • Western (ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252, MacRoman), Central European  (ISO-8859-2, Windows-1250, MacCE), South European/Esperanto/Maltese (ISO-8859-3), Baltic/North European (ISO-8859-4, Windows-1257), Baltic/North European (ISO-8859-13), Cyrillic (ISO-8859-5, Windows-1251, KOI8-R,  ISO-IR-111 aka ECMA-Cyrillic, MacCyrillic, CP-866), Arabic (ISO-8859-6, Windows-1256) - (not in spec, might be removed from commercial build later) , Greek (ISO-8859-7, Windows-1253, MacGreek), Hebrew (ISO-8859-8 aka Windows-1255) - (not in spec, might be removed from commercial build later), Turkish (ISO-8859-9 aka Latin5, Windows-1254, MacTurkish), Nordic/North European (ISO-8859-10 aka Latin6), Celtic (ISO-8859-14), Western (ISO-8859-15), Armenian (ARMISCII-8), Thai (TIS-620 aka Windows-874), Ukrainian (KOI8-U, MacUkrainian), Vietnamese (VISCII, Windows-1258, VIET-VPS, VIET-TCVN5712), other Mac encodings (MacCroatian, MacIcelandic, MacRomanian).
Multi-byte:
  • Japanese (Shift_JIS, EUC-JP), Traditional Chinese (Big5, EUC-TW), Simplified Chinese (GB2312), Unicode (UTF-8, UCS-2, UCS-4), Korean (EUC-KR), Western (T.61-8bit) - support this for LDAP v2 and X.500.
Stateful:
  • Japanese (ISO-2022-JP), Unicode (UTF-7, IMAP4-modified-UTF7- Needed for IMAP folder names)