I saw the same thing while subscribed to the digest. It was one of the reasons I switched back; the other was that I couldn't respond to any specific thread, instead being forced to create a new one for every message like Warren does. On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 3:50 AM, Keith F. Lynch <kfl@keithlynch.net> wrote:

Bill Mann <wfmann@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

...

Using Thunderbird on Linux, I have no trouble seeing UTF-8 (Unicode) encoded messages coming via the Math-fun Digest.

Are you sure you're getting the *digest* -- multiple messages in one email? If you are, then I am baffled, as in my digest I'm getting literal ASCII question marks. I've looked at the raw bits to make sure: 00111111. There's nothing for Thunderbird or any other software to interpret. Trying to undo this at my end would be like dividing by zero to correct for having multiplied by zero -- the needed information simply isn't there.

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-- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mike http://reperiendi.wordpress.com

On Wed, 6 May 2015, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Bill Mann <wfmann@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

...

Using Thunderbird on Linux, I have no trouble seeing UTF-8 (Unicode) encoded messages coming via the Math-fun Digest.

Are you sure you're getting the *digest* -- multiple messages in one email? If you are, then I am baffled, as in my digest I'm getting literal ASCII question marks. I've looked at the raw bits to make sure: 00111111. There's nothing for Thunderbird or any other software to interpret. Trying to undo this at my end would be like dividing by zero to correct for having multiplied by zero -- the needed information simply isn't there.

I get the digest, and when I read it, it has proper UTF-8 content where needed. I put an example of what I receive here: http://iq0.com/math-fun-digest.txt It's a multi-part MIME thingy, with one part per message. Each part has it's own content-type and content-transfer-encoding header lines, like these: Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="Boundary_(ID_ikgOG7VI0O5gmeqBxtop+g)" Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: multipart/digest; boundary="Boundary_(ID_j/Ddb6D54ZNcJ26A3W2ouQ)" Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Some parts are plain ascii, some are UTF-8 (with epsilons and pis and deltas and superscripts -- very nice) and some are other, less standard, formats. I read it the digest the Pine, one of the most primitive mail readers imaginable. It appears to be able to handle anything math-fun can throw at it. I think I had to do some setup in Pine to get it to deliver UTF-8 to my screen, and in my Linux and OS X terminal programs to get them to display UTF-8 properly, but, having done so, everything works fine. Anything more modern than Pine should be able to read it -- UTF-8 is more than 20 years old (I was in the room when it was invented). Unicode, even older. I don't think there's anything busted in the digest as I see it. The problem is likely something on your end. If mailman has a per-user setting for character set, that could be it. Otherwise, some mail program on your end might be rewriting things. That could be hard to diagnose. -- Tom Duff. Schlagzeugspieler/Assistant storyteller.