NNTP client: extended characters with Outlook Express

Hello all,

 

some of you have been reporting issues using Outlook Express when there are non-English characters in the messages. This also affect other newsgroup clients. It took a while to nail this one down. but here is the solution: Make sure to enable Unicode (UTF-8) support in your NNTP software for both send and receive.

 

A little technical background for those interested: To be ready to support languages from around the world, CorelDRAW.com is making sure that everything anyone writes with the web interface is in the universal character encoding standard called Unicode (it's actually UTF-8: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8). Everything works great when using a web browser as they all support it by default. But NNTP clients such as outlook assume that the server on the other end is actually using another (older) way of encoding characters, usually a derivative of ASCII 7 bit (plain English is supported there). The problem starts when you need more than 128 characters to cover a language (French has é à è for example).

 

And now for the way to get accents supported in Outlook Express, both for messages you write and those you read:

• Under Tools > Options, go to the "Read" Tab.
• Click on the "Fonts..." button.
• In the list of languages, choose Unicode
• Make sure that Encoding is "Unicode (UTF-8)".
• Click on "Set as Default"
• Click on "OK".
• Go to the "Send" Tab
• Click on "International Settings..."
• Select "Unicode (UTF-8)" as the default encoding.
• Click on "OK".
• Click on "OK" one more time to close the Options window

You should be all set and should be able to read and write in the forums with extended characters directly from Outlook Express. For other NNTP clients, the procedure is very similar.

 

Posting messages from an NNTP clients, once configured to work with Unicode, enables you to post messages in both plain text and HTML. You can also include attachments to posts, the same way as you can with the web interface.

 

I am still chasing down the origin of an error message when posting from Outlook Express on Windows XP (Posting not allowed...). Currently, the work-around is to click OK when that message comes up and to select "Yes" on the next screen to post anyway. This problem only occurs with OE. Windows Mail on Vista (the replacement for OE) doesn't have this problem. 

 

Gérard, using OE with accents

 

It's working in Mozilla, though. I see your accent just fine in both my
newsreader and in the web version. Are you sure you got the UTF-8 to
stick for reading as well as sending? You're obviously sending
correctly. That's half the battle.
Val P.

Edward Thurston wrote:
> Sorry Chief, no differencs at this end (using OE)
>
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> Edward Thurston
> web:
> http://groups.msn.com/HSMPHOTOSportsPhotography
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> http://coreldraw.com/forums/p/440/1358.aspx#1358
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Hello Ted,

I can see the accent correctly with the web interface. This means that your OE settings for sending messages are correct.

Try following for the reading options: In the Tools > Options menu, go to the read tab. Click on the "International Settings..." button. You should have "Default Encoding" set to Unicode (UTF-8). If not, go back to the Fonts setting (button on the read tab) and make sure to click on set default.. Still on the "International Settings..." screen, make sure that you have the "Use default encoding for all incoming messages" checked.

Does that work?

Gérard
 

 

 

Gérard, I see your accents just fine from NNTP in this thread, but in other threads where you've posted in the last day or so, I'm still seeing the accented E as an A with a tilde over it, then a Copyright symbol. Any clues? Val P.

Nevermind. I just realized I've got to set the UTF-8 defaults for EACH
and EVERY forum I subscribe to on the CorelDRAW server individually. Not
your problem. Wonder if they fixed this in newer versions of Mozilla. :(
Val P.

Val P. wrote:

> Gérard, I see your accents just fine from NNTP in this thread, but in
> other threads where you've posted in the last day or so, I'm still
> seeing the accented E as an A with a tilde over it, then a Copyright
> symbol. Any clues? Val P.
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> http://www.lvsonline.com
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> http://coreldraw.com/forums/p/440/1415.aspx#1415
>