MUAs Testing results

Product: Netscape Messenger 4.04
URL: http://home.netscape.com/navigator/index.htmlProduct Contact:
Environment: Windows 95
Test date: 1998-03, 1998-03

1. Results of the test
 
Netscape Messenger 4.04
Charset 
 ISO 8859-1  
Latin 1		 KOI8-R  
Russian		 KOI8-U 
Ukrainian		 Windows  
Cyrillic CP1251		 ISO 8859-2 
Latin 2		 ISO 8859-4 
Latin4 
Scandinavian/ Baltic		  
test-1 (Displaying) Pass  Pass Pass (6) Pass (2)      
test-2 (Printing) Pass  Pass Pass (6) Pass (2)      
test-3 
(Replying with non-ASCII A, S)		 Pass  Pass Pass Fail (3)      
test-4 
(Replying with non-ASCII Body)		 Pass  Pass (3) Pass (3) Fail (3)      
test-5  
(Replying Copy& Paste)		 Pass  Pass (3) Pass (3) Fail (3)      
test-6 
(Forwarding)		 Pass  Pass Pass Pass      
test-7 
(Typing on kbd)		 Pass  Pass Pass Pass (6)      
test-8 
(Exch non-ASCII default) 		              
test-9 
(UTF7/UTF8)		 Pass  Pass (7) Pass (7) Maybe      
 
Comment:
(2) You can’t change encoding for Cyrillic text when reading message
(3) Composed Cyrillic msg always treated as CP1251 and converted to KOI8-R and v.v. according to built-in table KOI8-R<->CP1251
(4) Send Cyrillic msg only in KOI8-R
(5) Display correctly Messages list if header charset coincide with Selected Document Encoding
(6) KOI8-U encoding reduced to KOI8-R – miss four ukr. letters (ukr. I, ukr. ii. ukr. ie, ukr. ghe with upturn)
(7) Correctly support only UTF7, UTF8 encoded message contains unconverted non-ASCII text

2. Examination of Multilingual features of Mail User’s Agents
 
Netscape Messanger 4.04 Communicator SETUPs and First Examination 

1. Changing Document Encoding when Reading/Displaying message 

View>Encoding
    • Western (Latin 1)
    • Central European (ISO)
    • Central European (Windows-1250)
    • Japanese (Auto-Detect)
    • Japanese (Shift_JIS)
    • Lapanese (EUC-JP)
    • Traditional Chinese (Big5)
    • Traditional Chinese (EUTC-TW)
    • Simplified Chinese (GB2312)
    • Korean (Auto-Detect)
    • Cyrillic (KOI8-R)
    • Cyrillic (ISO8859-5)
    • Cyrillic (Windows-1251)
    • Greek (Iso 8859-7)
    • Greek (Windows-1257)
    • Turkish (ISO 8859-9)
    • Unicode (UTF-8) 
    • Unicode (UTF-7) 
    • User Defined
2. Encoding Setting 

Options>General Preference>Fonts>For the Encoding 

    • Latin1
    • Latin2
    • Japanese
    • Traditional Chinese
    • Simplified Chinese
    • Korean
    • Cyrillic
    • Greek
    • Turkish
    • Unicode (UTF8)
    • User Defined
3. Language Settings 

Options>General Preference>Language>Accept Language 

    • Afrikaans [af]
    • Chinese [zh]
    • Chinese/China [zh-CN]
    • Dutch [nl]
    • English [en]
    • English/United Kingdom [en-GB]
    • English/United States [en-US]
    • French [fr]
    • French/Canada [fr-CA]
    • french/france [fr-FR]
    • German [de]
    • Italian [it]
    • Japanese [ja]
    • Korean [ko]
    • Portuguese/Brasil [pt-BR]
    • Spanish [es]
    • Spanish/Spain [es-ES]
    • Swedish [sv]
    • User define
4. Mail Send 

Edit>Preferences>Mail & Groups>Messages>Send Message that use 8-bit characters 

    • As is 
    • Using the “quoted prontable” MIME encoding
5. Mail Servers 
    • POP
    • IMAP
6. When sellecting Fonts for the Encoding loading is very slowly!!
 

3. Free form documenting of testing process

Tested MUA - Netscape Messenger 4.04
Reference MUA - Netscape Mail 3.01 Gold
 
Netscape Messanger 4.04 Communicator READ 
  1. When displaying/reading message “Content-Type: text/plain; charset=” attribute used in priority to Vew>Encoding 
  • This sometimes leads to difficulties in reading message when wrong charset parameter is used in message
    • to overcome this you can read message in View>Page Source
  • Note. Overriding parameter is happened only for Cyrillic group. If you select Latin1 or Latin2 display is changed
  • When you change encoding to UTF8, body text disappeares/reduced to some ASCII characters (??)
  1. Forwarded message displayed with its original charset parameter
  2. Subject: for Cyrillic Encodings always is displayed in KOI8-R
  3. When you try to read Cyrillic text with encoding not from Cyrillic group, message body and header are dispalyed in CP1251
OBSERVATION: Netscape Messenger uses internal converting of message text (body) to CP1251 and display it not correctly when changing non-cyrillic Encoding 
Netscape Messanger 4.04 Communicator COMPOSE 
  1. You can change View>Encoding (for Cyrillic) but it doesnt affect message composer display
    • Suggestion: Message Encoding is selected before openning Composer windows
  1. Forwarded message is sent with charset selected before composing
    • There is not completely clear situation when forwarded message (without original charset papameter) is displayed correctly
  1. When Reply: for Cyrillic message text is converted to koi8-r if needed
    • therefore reply on koi8-r message with View-cp1251 cause wrong copbverting - info is lost
    • SUGGESTION. You should keep message charset when Replying
    • Note. The latter is not happened when reply with Latin1 - Excellent!
  1. Composing with Cut & Paste is performed correctly 
  2. Compose with UTF8 and UTF7 has the same Content-Type: text/plain; charset=x-UNICODE-2-0-UTF-7
 
Netscape Messanger 4.04 Communicator SEND 
  1. Cyrillic message is always converted to KOI8-R when sent (i.e. convertion is happened if needed)
    • That is why when you type text with CP1251 but selected KOI8-R before openning Compose windows, convertion is not aplaied but charset koi8-r is inserted.
    • If you need to type in KOI8-R you should type “blindly”
 
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