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Why do (Russian) characters in some received emails change when reading in David InfoCenter?

Why do (Russian) characters in some received emails change when reading in David InfoCenter?

I'm using David InfoCenter as email software, and I have troubles with some of my emails in Russian. It's only a few letters, in some emails (sent from different people), like for example the "R" ("Р" in russian) will be shown as a "Т". In other emails in Russian, the problem doesn't appear. Isn't it strange? Has anyone had the same problem already and found what causes it?

Asked by: Guest | Views: 417
Total answers/comments: 1
Guest [Entry]

"To break down the message:

Subject: ????

Too bad, your David InfoCenter is not doing things right. The above should have been something like:

Subject: =?utf-8?Q?=D0=A2=D0=B5=D1=81=D1=82?=

So, this is a bug that should be reported, and fixed.

Next:

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=""----_=_NextPart_000_00017783.4AF7FB71""

The above tells the recipient that after each line ""----_=_NextPart_000_00017783.4AF7FB71"" it will find the very same message in a different format. Good.

Next:

This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.

The above will be visible to users of old email software that does not understand MIME. Good.

Next:

------_=_NextPart_000_00017783.4AF7FB71
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=""utf-8""
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
0KLQtdGB0YI=

The above is the plain text, without bold, italic, etcetera. Using the great Online Base64 Decoder from FileFormat.info, the 0KLQtdGB0YI= translates back to Тест. Aha, not the lowercase тест like you wrote...? Anyway, seems fine, and a good email client should understand this part.

In some more detail: 0KLQtdGB0YI= actually decodes to hexadecimal d0 a2 d0 b5 d1 81 d1 82 and you (should) see the same hexadecimal numbers in the Subject above. (When not properly decoded as being UTF-8, like when erroneously interpreted as Windows-1252, this would show as ТеÑÑ‚.)

Next:

------_=_NextPart_000_00017783.4AF7FB71
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=""utf-8""
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
PCFET0NUWVBFIEhUTUwgUFVCTElDICItLy9XM0MvL0RURCBIVE1MIDQuMCBUcmFuc2l0aW9uYWwv
L0VOIj4NCjxIVE1MPjxIRUFEPg0KPE1FVEEgaHR0cC1lcXVpdj1Db250ZW50LVR5cGUgY29udGVu
dD0idGV4dC9odG1sOyBjaGFyc2V0PXV0Zi04Ij4NCjxNRVRBIG5hbWU9R0VORVJBVE9SIGNvbnRl
bnQ9Ik1TSFRNTCA4LjAwLjYwMDEuMTg4NTIiPjwvSEVBRD4NCjxCT0RZIHN0eWxlPSJGT05UOiAx
MHB0IENvdXJpZXIgTmV3OyBDT0xPUjogIzAwMDAwMCIgbGVmdE1hcmdpbj01IHRvcE1hcmdpbj01
Pg0KPERJViBzdHlsZT0iRk9OVDogMTBwdCBDb3VyaWVyIE5ldzsgQ09MT1I6ICMwMDAwMDAiPtCi
0LXRgdGCPFNQQU4gDQppZD10b2JpdF9ibG9ja3F1b3RlPjxTUEFOIGlkPXRvYml0X2Jsb2NrcXVv
dGU+PC9ESVY+PC9TUEFOPjwvU1BBTj48L0JPRFk+PC9IVE1MPg==

The above is the very same, as a HTML formatted message. This will look about the same, though this is not at all valid HTML, as the tags are not closed in the order in they are opened, and an id should be unique but id=tobit_blockquote is used twice in this one-line message. Actually, the word ""blockquote"" suggests that you might have copied the word Тест from another message?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC ""-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content=""text/html; charset=utf-8"">
<META name=GENERATOR content=""MSHTML 8.00.6001.18852""></HEAD>
<BODY style=""FONT: 10pt Courier New; COLOR: #000000"" leftMargin=5 topMargin=5>
<DIV style=""FONT: 10pt Courier New; COLOR: #000000"">Тест<SPAN
id=tobit_blockquote><SPAN id=tobit_blockquote></DIV></SPAN></SPAN>
</BODY></HTML>

Also, there's no need to send HTML for simple messages...

Finally (note the two trailing dashes):

------_=_NextPart_000_00017783.4AF7FB71--

This tells the email software the end of all formats is reached.

This test message does not explain how Тест could become Oano, as the question marks could never translate into that. Maybe the question marks are not real question marks after all. Anyway: the Subject being wrong is a bug in your email client, which does not send the correct Subject. Also the HTML is buggy. Stop using that software."