Date:         Sun, 18 Apr 2021 08:56:17 -0700
Reply-To:     Steve Williams <sbw@SBW.ORG>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Williams <sbw@SBW.ORG>
Subject:      Re: Vanagon List Archives: A Technical Problem
In-Reply-To:  <f7a91d5b-7c9b-1c84-7f7d-f81e993cd465@sbw.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

On 4/18/2021 8:43 AM, I wrote:
> For example, here's an a with an umlaut: ä
>
> (I don't know whether my email is configured correctly to encode that
> character.  It'll be interesting to see THIS email as delivered by the
> list and in the archives.)

Heh!  The a-umlaut appears correctly in my email as I received it via
the list.

As do the curly quotes I did NOT use when I composed my email.  Not sure
whether my email client replaced my straight quotes without asking.
I'll look into that!

Also correct are the curly quotes in my excerpts of Eric's email, which
were already curly when I received his email via the list.

HOWEVER, in the archives, while my message is not base-64 encoded as
Dennis's was, those characters are not encoded correctly:

http://gerry.vanagon.com/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind2104c&L=vanagon&F=&S=&P=7498

They appear as unrelated sequences of other non-ASCII characters.
That's a common problem, I've found.  Most of the software I write
doesn't get it right either.  Sending, storing, retrieving, and
displaying UTF-8 character end to end is far more complex than we think!

And yet, Vanagon List is a hugely helpful resource!  We all benefit from
the discussion, so these little quirks are nothing to get too worked up
about.