# Receiving windows-1252 or iso-8859-1 via TMail **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [December 8, 2005, 3:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/receiving-windows-1252-or-iso-8859-1-via-tmail/49763 "2005-12-08T15:52:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6de8d8/32.png) [@joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joost)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 3:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/receiving-windows-1252-or-iso-8859-1-via-tmail/49763/1 "2005-12-08T15:52:07Z")
My ActionMailer receives emails fine. I can access the headers, body and attachment(s). However, this only works flawlessly when the emails are in the US-ASCII charset: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed When they’re either in windows-1252 or iso-8859-1, the non-ascii characters are misrepresented or simply printed as question marks. Has anyone succesfully received emails in charsets other than US-ASCII? No API docs, manuals or wikis mention this. The only TMail doc I could find (from 2004) mentions that the author is not planning to add i17n (sic) support because it’s too complex for him. I don’t know what that means. As an aside, internationalisation and hi-ascii character sets seem to be an afterthought in Rails. Am I alone in this? ---
**Author:** ![joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6de8d8/32.png) [@joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joost)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 6:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/receiving-windows-1252-or-iso-8859-1-via-tmail/49763/2 "2005-12-09T06:03:03Z")
On Dec 8, 2005, at 9:52 AM, joost baaij wrote: > anyone succesfully received emails in charsets other than US-ASCII? No > API docs, manuals or wikis mention this. The only TMail doc I could > find > (from 2004) mentions that the author is not planning to add i17n (sic) > support because it’s too complex for him. I don’t know what that means. I have not actually done it, but check out the Mailr project. I believe Luben has code in it to properly handle other encodings. > As an aside, internationalisation and hi-ascii character sets seem to > be > an afterthought in Rails. Am I alone in this? A debate hashed out numerous times on the list, search the archives for various points of view. – Scott B. Lunchbox Software [http://lunchboxsoftware.com](http://lunchboxsoftware.com) [http://lunchroom.lunchboxsoftware.com](http://lunchroom.lunchboxsoftware.com) [http://rubyi.st](http://rubyi.st) ---
**Author:** ![joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6de8d8/32.png) [@joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joost)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2005, 1:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/receiving-windows-1252-or-iso-8859-1-via-tmail/49763/3 "2005-12-10T01:16:15Z")
joost wrote: > My ActionMailer receives emails fine. I can access the headers, body and > attachment(s). However, this only works flawlessly when the emails are > in the US-ASCII charset: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed > > When they’re either in windows-1252 or iso-8859-1, the non-ascii > characters are misrepresented or simply printed as question marks. The mailer converts all received mails to UTF-8. > Has > anyone succesfully received emails in charsets other than US-ASCII? Yes. [www.ruby-forum.com](http://www.ruby-forum.com) receives all kind of weird charsets. > No > API docs, manuals or wikis mention this. The only TMail doc I could find > (from 2004) mentions that the author is not planning to add i17n (sic) > support because it’s too complex for him. I don’t know what that means. I’m afraid the TMail delivered with Rails doesn’t have too much in common with the original TMail anymore. Unfortunately I haven’t seen any efforts to merge the changes into the original TMail. > As an aside, internationalisation and hi-ascii character sets seem to be > an afterthought in Rails. Am I alone in this? There is no problem with character sets. ---
**Author:** ![joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6de8d8/32.png) [@joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joost)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2005, 2:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/receiving-windows-1252-or-iso-8859-1-via-tmail/49763/4 "2005-12-10T02:06:57Z")
andreas wrote: > The mailer converts all received mails to UTF-8. Ouch! The blinding flash of insight just hit me. Thanks so much, with this info I could solve the issue immediately. Since my tables/model are in iso-8859-1 and no way for me to change that, I simply convert the UTF-8 and all is good. The relevant snippet: require ‘iconv’ # Receive a message def receive(email) # Transcode to iso-8859-1 body = Iconv.new(‘iso-8859-1’, ‘utf-8’).iconv(email.body) # handle the email… end ---
**Author:** ![joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6de8d8/32.png) [@joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joost)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 11:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/receiving-windows-1252-or-iso-8859-1-via-tmail/49763/5 "2005-12-12T11:45:29Z")
Iconv has its limits, but working internally with UTF-8 is probably the best way to go. Thanks everyone. ---
**Author:** ![joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/6de8d8/32.png) [@joost](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joost)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2005, 4:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/receiving-windows-1252-or-iso-8859-1-via-tmail/49763/6 "2005-12-10T04:58:07Z")
2005/12/10, Andreas S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid): > > No > > API docs, manuals or wikis mention this. The only TMail doc I could find > > (from 2004) mentions that the author is not planning to add i17n (sic) > > support because it’s too complex for him. I don’t know what that means. I have talked with Minero about I18n in TMail. He said he would support I18N when Ruby supports it. For example, when you encode a long subject, you should split a string correctly. But in current Ruby, you can do it only in ASCII, UTF-8, EUC-JP and Shift\_JIS with NKF (I guess Iconv does not use for spliting a string with correct character boundary, right?). > I’m afraid the TMail delivered with Rails doesn’t have too much in > common with the original TMail anymore. Unfortunately I haven’t seen any > efforts to merge the changes into the original TMail. In RubyConf2005, Minero and DHH had talked about TMail (mainly license, not merging). > > As an aside, internationalisation and hi-ascii character sets seem to be > > an afterthought in Rails. Am I alone in this? gorou-san have developed ActiveHeart plugin, Japanization module for Rails (ActiveRecrod and ActionMailer). It’s like hack, but very useful for Japanese Railers. [http://svn.rails2u.com/public/plugins/trunk/active\_heart/](http://svn.rails2u.com/public/plugins/trunk/active_heart/) If you want to handle some encodings (not every encodings), plug-in approch is not so bad. Complete I18N framework is not easy (and fun), like complete login framework. Regards, Masayoshi T.