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International M11 Status Page




by Katsuhiko Momoi
Last Update: 11/22/99

This page tracks the progress of M11 International features.  By the time M11 is completed, this page should have all the completed M11 features and testing hints. If you are interested in what has been completed in the prior Milestone, visit the M10 international status and testing hints page.
 

M11 International features that have been completed:

General:

I18n Engineering and Milestone Tasks document is available here.
I18n Beta 1 Feature Plan is available here.
I18n Beta 1 Mail/News Functional specifications are 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:
    Note: The name of the executable has changed from apprunner to mozilla.
 
Preferences
  • There is now very little need to directly edit Preferences file, prefs.js.  Both profile migration and new profile creation are now very easy to accomplish with the improved Profile Manager. Users who have had trouble setting up Mail server(s) before should try Profile Manager.
  • Mozilla can 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 Mozilla.
    • The window for profile migration will appear the first time you start M11 build after the installation.
    • If it does not, you can start with the profile manager: mozilla -installer (Unix & Win).  Mac users can start with the Mozilla Profile Manager file.
    • Important Note: If you run Profile Manager and exit without selecting any profile, you may have a problem starting Mozilla thereafter. This seems to be a bug. In such case, run the Profile Manager again and select a profile. After this, you will not have the problem.
  • If you have used an earlier version of Mozilla, we recommend that you delete the file called mozregistry.dat (Win)/Mozilla registry (Mac)/registry (Unix) before you run M11 Mozilla. (Don't delete Netscape Registry file for Mac, which is for Communicator 4.x.). We recommend this procedure because during an earlier Milestone, i.e. M10, there has been a change in the way registry works and the old registry prior to M9 will not work well with builds later than M9. Read the section in the Release Notes called Files Used or Created to find out where you can find these files.
  • When you start M11 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 called "mozProfile" 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.)
  • Also read the Installation instructions for your platform carefully in this Release Notes.
Browser:
  • There have been a number of  improvements made since M10 in stability and features that matter to international users. M11 is now closer to a browser usable on a daily basis.
  • GFX widget/Ender is ON by default and thus requires no special setting in the prefs.js as was reported for M9. This means that all input areas in M11 support non-ASCII character input including input using CJK IMEs. Editor bugs reported for M10 have been mostly fixed in M11. Thus users should have usable Editor on all platforms.  Read the Editor section below for more information.
  • M11 converter(s): There are no new converters in M11.  See here for a list of all the converters at M11.
    • 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 M11 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.)
  • View | Character Set menu:
    • Note: The current Character Set menus (including the name of the menu itself) are temporary and will be replaced eventually an entirely new single menu. The new menu specs will be published soon. The name "Character Set" will also be replaced by a new name.
    • You will notice that there are 7 Character Set Menus in the Browser window, and 6 in Composer/Editor and Messenger.
    • The first 6 "static" menus with sub-titles such as "ISO" constitute a workaround for long, non-customizable and non-scrollable menu.
    • The 7th Character Set menu -- found only in the Browser window -- is the dynamic menu which is under development but will eventually replace the workaround menu. This is the same menu as the first 6 put together. It does not scroll under Linux and Windows and so you cannot probably see the whole list except on Mac, but the dynamic menu is 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.
    • Both types of  menus work in M11 and one of them is actually redundant. This is harmless, however. Character set menus in other components are still static at this point and you will not see the dynamic menu.
    • View | Character Set menu Display problem workaround: The workaround mentioned in M10 and earlier Release Notes has been incorporated into M11 and thus is no longer necessary.
  • View | Character Set menu usage:
    • 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.
  • Charset detection modules in the Browser Menu.
    • The charset detection modules for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, East Asian (CJK), Chinese (Simplified & Traditional Chinese), Ukrainian, and Russian are in a menu below the Character Set menu. (Note: At present, there are a few bugs for Ukrainian and Russian modules from working. There is also a bad bug which prevents any character input by Editor once either of these auto-detect modules is turned on. We recommend against this using these 2 modules until these bugs are fixed.)
    • 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.
    • Until M10, 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 "mozilla.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.
       
  • HTTP charset: Mozilla supports server-generated HTTP charset correctly. (The order of priority is: HTTP charset > Document Meta Charset > Browser Menu choice.)
  • View | Page Source: works only partially for different charsets.
    • It seems to work OK:
      • if the page has a correct HTTP charset associated with it
    • In other cases, there are some reported failures of correct display or non-loading. They fall under 3 types of cases:
      • The page has a document-based meta charset tag --> may not load the source view or may load the page itself again rather than the source of that page. (The latter has been reported for Linux. Both bugs were fixed in M12.)
      • The page has been correctly loaded with the use of a charset detector --> the source view will load but may not correctly display characters.
      • When none of the conditions above holds and the user has loaded the page correctly with the manual change of the Character Set menu --> the source view will load but may not correctly display characters.
  • CJK line breaking: 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.
  • CJK basic printing: should be working on M11 on Windows. Not verified to be working on Linux -- probably not.
  • EUC-TW bug: M10 had a bug which produces wrong display for EUC-TW (Traditional Chinese) pages. This problem has been fixed.
  • 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.  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.
    • Central European ISO-8859-2 display: There seems to be a Mac bug -- some 8-bit range characters display as "?" even though a correct font exists on the system.
  • Java: Java Plug-ins work OK 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. We find that JRE 1.3 Beta can run more applets than JRE 1.2.2 plugin files and are therefore recommended. Plugin files are also much smaller in size in the latter version.
      • Create a directory named plugins in the same directory where the mozilla.exe 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)
    • Due to a few bugs, some 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: For IME specifications, see this document by Tague Griffith.
  • Note: There have been many small fixes made in M11 to make editing easier for the user. The user will find editing tasks generally easier with M11.
  • CJK IME: All major bugs present in M10 have been fixed.
  • Basic IME support on Unix: We test Japanese input under Red Hat 6.0 + kinput2 + wnn4. We need your help on testing other Unix platforms and other language IMEs!
    • Good news!: Almost all major Unix IME-related bugs observed in M10 have been fixed in M11.
  • 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.
      • So far we have received reports that XCIN for Traditional Chinese works with Mozilla. Also internally we could get one Korean IME to work. We will publish further info in the future about these IMEs.
  • IME bugs -- you should know the following to use IMEs effectively.
    • On all platforms:
      • The crashing bug, which was caused by the user inputting characters via IME without any ASCII characters first, has been fixed.
    • On Unix:  Although the crashing bugs have been fixed, there are a few annoying bugs still remaining. Unix IME is by no means in a great shape yet but it is generally usable in M11. You need to be aware of  the following bugs for Unix IME.
      • 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.
      • With kinput2, we noticed a bug in which the input module window often covers the input line. You can move the window if this bothers you.
  • 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. Improvements are expected in M12. (Most of the intra-application copy/paste bugs have been fixed in M12. The inter-application copy/paste is working partially in M12 -- a full fix is scheduled for M13.)
    • 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 under HTML Mail Composer (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 edited document in that character set. Bugs or comments to: Bugzilla or netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n. Here are some known bugs.
    • With M11, all documents are saved into UTF-8 and the menu change is not observed for saving. This is a bug and will be fixed in near future.
    • 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.
  • Notable bug fixes:
    • Korean IME now works on Mac.
    • Keyboard switching for various international keyboards should work now
    • Selected IME text is now replaced properly.
    • AltGR key now works enabling some keyboard users to input "@".
    • CJK character deletion in form now works OK.
  • Summary of what has been enabled up to M 11:
    • CJK IMEs on Windows and Mac.
    • IME on Unix enabled. (Known to work for Japanese and Traditional Chinese (e.g. XCN). Other languages not tested yet.)
    • 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:
    • 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.
        • Mozilla's nsconv conversion utility has been enhanced by "jonas.utterstrom@vittran.norrnod.se"-- it now supports charset aliases: The original nsconv is by the courtesy of Frank Tang. nsconv is installed in the same directory as your mozilla executable. You can use any encoding names recognizable by Mozilla and their aliases checked into the source in using this utility. Here's the basic command line for using this utility:
          • Usage schema --any one of the following:
            • nsconv -f source_charsetname -t target_charsetname source_filename new_filename
            • nsconv -f source_charsetname -t target_charsetname source_filename > new_filename
            • 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 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 and Linux 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 M11:
      • The greatest beneficiary of the M11 fixes in Preferences and Profile Manager is the Mail user. IMAP and POP mail and News servers settings can be done via UI now and messages/articles download rather easily. Read this section also in addition to looking at Mail specific preferences.
      • If you have been hesitating to use Mozilla Mail and News, M11 offers very good reason to start using them. It's very easy to set up. Just use Edit | Account Setup ... menu!
    • SMTP sever setting:
      • 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 ignores the password provided in the prefs.js file.
      • When accessing a mail server for downloading messages, you will be asked to provide a password via a dialog. If you want Mozilla to remember your password, use Edit | Account Setup ... menu and select "server" under each one of your accounts. Then check "Save password: box. You can also insert the following 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.

    • IMAP server setting:
      • Use Edit | Account Setup ... menu to set up a variety of IMAP server related options.
    • NNTP (News) server setting:
      • In M11, this is very easy to do. Use Edit | Account Setup ... menu and add an News server. Then when it is added, use File | Subscribe ... menu to add newsgroup you want to read.
      • Reading in different languages is now working if the charset parameter is specified in news articles. At this point, news reading in Chinese will be generally difficult since many Chinese newsgroups contain messages without any charset parameter.
    • POP Mail settings:
      • Use Edit | Account Setup ... menu and set up several different options using the server setting under each account.
      • You can set it up to keep the messages on the POP server after you have downloaded them, too.
  • Downloading POP mail:
    • The performance in this process improved greatly in M11 as compared to M10.
    • Note: some POP servers don' t handle multiple, simultaneous accesses to the same account well. In such cases, keep only one connection alive to use it trouble-free.
  • How various mail-related international functions are working at M11:
    • 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 working partially. If an Address Book entry contains non-ASCII characters, they are now displayed correctly. However, matching try with non-ASCII characters don't work with M11.
    • 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.
      • Earlier there were a few bugs which prevented Mozilla from displaying Thai (Windows-874 or TIS-620) mail messages. They have been fixed and now you can view mail messages sent in these encodings.
      • 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.
      • 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 can work on attachments without explicit charset information -- if it is turned on.
      • Multiple attachments in different languages: can now be viewed without changing the charset menu if each attachment's header contains a correct charset parameter. If you send a message with multiple attachments and if each attachment is a document with a meta charset tag, Mozilla will create a content-type charset parameter for each attachment from the meta-tag information.
      • Japanese attachments and auto-detection:
        • The auto-detection module set for the Browser via its Auto-Detect  menu 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 Japanese EUC-JP attachment display. To work around this problem, we have put in a mail specific charset detector which only works in Messenger under Windows only. (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 to 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.
      • Printing: Basic printing is enabled. Currently it is rather primitive. Headers don't seem to be printed -- only body text.
    • 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 headers on all platforms. CJK characters are not displayed correctly in the Sender field and therefore cannot be tested. 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.
    • Linux sorting:
      • There seems to be a problem with Latin 1 sort -- this is under investigation.
      • Also sorting is working for some Japanese locale names but not others. It might have to do with locale name aliasing. This problem is under investigation.
  • Sending Latin 1 & Japanese attachments/pages:
    • File | Send Page is now working in M11 in addition to attaching a local file to a message.
  • Send-related bugs:
    • When the Subject header contains more than a certain number of characters, MIME-encoding fails to occur and raw UTF-8 headers will be sent. Such headers will not be viewable except under UTF-8 encoding. This problem was fixed in M12. In M11, you might want to keep non-ASCII headers fairly short.
    • Under HTML send option, if you reply/auto-quote on a msg and then cancel without inputting at least one character into the text body, Mozilla will crash. If you decide to cancel this type of message, input a few characters into the text body before you cancel. This bug will be fixed in M12.
    • If you reply/quote a message which has an attachment bearing a meta-charset document tag, Mozilla may crash.
    • The original sender's name in CJK will be quoted only as dots. This problem was fixed in M12.
    • When you use Plain Text send option and Reply/quote a message, you may see strange characters at the beginning or the end of each quoted line. These characters will disappears when you send the message and therefore harmless but they are nonetheless impediments to editing.
    • In Forwarding inline an attached web page, contents except the URL links may be lost.
  • 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. Let us know how we are in sending messages in other languages. Send your report to: netscape.public.mozilla.qa.i18n.
  • Composing Latin 1 mail messages:
    • In sending 8-bit range characters with HTML mail under Latin encodings, starting with M11, we will generally use 8-bit characters rather than HTML entities. However, certain special characters not in the chosen encoding will be turned into CERs (so-called HTML entities) or NCRs (numeric character references).
    • In sending 8-bit range characters with Plain Text mail, we will generally use 8-bit characters rather than QP-encoded characters. Those characters not in the chosen encoding, e.g. the EURO under ISO-8859-1 is currently turned into a "?" symbol. We are considering more user-friendly spec for this currently.
  • General Fallback strategy for sending characters not found in the chosen encoding:
    • CERs or NCRs will be used in HTML mail.
    • "?" will substitute for non-existing characters under Plain Text send option. In future, we may offer an option to send in UTF-8 or some other encoding which support the characters in question.
  • Domain Name completion: is now working. An user ID only input will be automatically completed with the default domain when the Enter key is pressed.
  • 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
    Body - HTML
    Yes (8-bit characters are sent as is w/o entities except when the chosen charset does not contain the character)
    Yes
    Body - plain
    Yes (8-bit characters are sent as is w/o QP. When the chosen charset does not contain the character, "?" is used in its place currently.)
    Yes
    Reply/forward header
    Yes
    Yes
    Reply/forward body html 
    		 Yes -- POP mail, IMAP, NEWS (but some bugs) Yes -- POP mail, IMAP, NEWS (but some bugs)
    Reply/forward body plain
    		 Yes - IMAP, POP, News.  (but some bugs) Yes - IMAP, POP, News (but some bugs)
    Send/View Attachment(s)
    		 Yes (Send - local file and web page) Yes (Send - local file and web page.)
    Copy/paste into headers and body
    		 Yes (accented characters copy OK) Yes  (from headers to body in HTML composer only) 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.
      • 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 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)
  • We don't currently test Mac for international features. Though we cannot vouch for accuracy, many of our Windows/Linux features should be working on Mac also.
List of Charset Converters available at M11:

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)