Configuring Mail and News Readers

One of the joys of APL is the way that the expanded character set gives us brevity and clarity of expression. A downside is that when we need to squeeze APL through Mail and News applications which have their roots in 7-bit ASCII what the sender sends isn't always the same as the receiver receives - at some stage the code collapses into a heap of question marks or becomes illegible.

It doesn't have to be this way and the intention of this page is to set out working configurations for as many mail/news clients as possible.

For how to configure Browsers see ConfigueYourBrowserForUnicode.

For a general article about Unicode and encoding see UnicodeForAplers.

Goal

What we want to achieve is a three-step exchange of APL code:

1. APL code in a workspace is copy/pasted into a mail message or news posting body

2. Sent by Person A; May be forwarded and/or replied to (possibly more than once)

3. Received by Person B; Is copy/pasted into a workspace

APL code in a workspace

Unicode may not always be possible to Copy from and Paste into the ws.

• Dyalog 12 is, so far as we know, fully unicode compliant.
• APL2 can be configured to use a unicode clipboard.

• APLX has paste from and copy as unicode.

• Dyalog 11 has paste unicode but not copy as. However, it works!

• Dyalog 9 doesn't.
• Any more for any more???

• Try AplToUnicode for any non unicode capable interpreter.

The recipes below have been partly generated by trial-and-error; please correct, amend and extend as you see fit...

Platforms

Browsers

In general, Browser-based client have learned to deal well with Unicode. However, there are some problems:

1. On non-Windows-systems, some users have reported that single characters are displayed as boxes. The patter seems to be erratic.
2. On Windows systems, sometimes single characters are displayed as boxes. Installing the "APL385 Unicode" font has fixed that problem.
3. On Internet Explorer 6 and earlier, endless problems got reported. There is only one solution to the problem: choose a reliable browser.
4. Internet Explorer 7 is fine in 98% of the cases. However, on some systems is simply does not work, and nobody could figure out what is causing this problem.

GoogleMail

1. Looking at your account, click on "Setting" in the top-right corner
2. On the "General" tab, scroll to the bottom
3. Make sure that "Use Unicode (UTF-8) encoding for outgoing messages" is ticked

That's it. Works pretty well, there are no known problems.

If you encounter a problem, it is likely to be one of the problem listed above under "Browsers"

Hotmail

Yahoo

Windows

Mail Clients

Thunderbird

Fonts and Encodings:

• Proportional (Sans-serif)
• Serif (Times New Roman)
• Sans-serif (Arial)
• Monospace (Lucida Console)

Outgoing Mail - Unicode (UTF-8) Incoming Mail - Unicode (UTF-8)

Using the above settings it was possible to copy/paste from a Dyalog 12 (Unicode) session into a mail message. send it, receive it and copy/paste back into a Dyalog 12 (Unicode) session. APL characters were legible at all stages - default font was used (no attempt to override).

NewsReaders

On the face of it, a newsreader written in APL ought not to be too difficult to write. But there don't appear to be any, so the question becomes one of selecting a general newsreader which handles APL - which ought to come as a byproduct of handling Unicode. Specialised newsreading software seems to be a dying breed, and some long-established products are no longer being actively updated or supported.

This is a brief summary of some freely downloadable newsreaders and one web-based News Reader (Google); please correct and/or expand as you see fit.

Note that a News Reader cannot add Unicode to a site which itself does not provide Unicode-compatible data, but a New Reader might very well strip off Unicode from site who actually are Unicode capable.

40tude Dialog

40tude Dialog (no relation) is a free (for personal use) Windows newsreader which you can download from http://www.40tude.com/dialog/, the latest (as of early 2009) version is 2.0 Beta 38 (dated February 2005).

Casual testing indicates that it is capable of both sending and receiving APL code.

Test Environment: Windows XP SP3, Dyalog 12.0.5. Test procedure was to both type APL characters into a "compose" window and to cut/paste from a Dyalog session. Parts of the sent-and-received posting were cut/pasted back into a Dyalog session to check for executability and any character differences generated in the transmission.

Configuration Settings:

• Keyboard option (for XP): UK Dyalog AltGr

• Settings/General Settings/Posting: Composition font APL385 Unicode
• Settings/General Settings/Charsets: Allow 8-bit characters in emails (make sure that UTF-8 is not a "forbidden" charset)
• Settings/General Settings/Fonts and Colours: Choose APL385 for both Bodies and Bodies/Monospaced. No font fallbacks.
• Settings/Default Group Options/Charsets: Set default group charset to UTF-8

Notes:

• Typing APL into the body part of the composition window for a new posting is straightforward and WYSIWYG; you can type APL into the Subject: box, but it will not be rendered as APL (there doesn't appear to be a configuration option allowing charset/font selection for this).
• The test copy/paste body was 14↓⎕av (apologies for using this archaic form), essentially trying to omit the awkward stuff at the start. Six characters failed to survive the round-trip (five box-drawing and y-acute).
• With these provisos the test was judged successful.
• It has not been determined whether postings generated using 40tude Dialog in this way are compatible with other newsreaders.

FreeAgent

Despite the "free" in its name FreeAgent appears to be a charged-for product, and has not been further investigated.

GoogleReader

The GoogleReader comes with a number of advantages:

• It's free
• It's Unicode capable without the need to do anything about it
• It's web-based

and some disadvantages:

• It will tell Google what you are interested in - not everybody likes that
• Feed updates sometime (rarely) appear hours after the feed was updated
• Password-protected feeds are not supported

NewsXPress

Doesn't seem configurable for either APL or Unicode.

Nomad News

Failed installation (Windows XP - 16 December 2008) with a message that it was "not a valid Win32 application".

Outlook Express

These are the settings I have finally arrived at to get Outlook Express, running under XP Home SP3, to both send and receive unicode posts to the comp.lang.apl newsgroup.

Via Tools/Options:

1. Send/Plain Text Settings
   • Check the MIME radio button
   • Encode text using: Quote printable
   • Check the Allow 8-bit characters in headers box
2. Send/International settings
   • Default encoding: unicode utf-8
3. Read/Fonts
   • Proportional font: APL385 Unicode
   • Fixed-width font: Courier New
   • Font size: Smaller
   • Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8)
   • Default encoding: Unicode
4. Read/International Settings
   • Default encoding: Unicode (UTF-8
   • Check Use default encoding for all incoming messages
5. Compose/Compose font
   • News: 9pt. APL385 Unicode

Author: GrahamSteer

SuperGravity

Failed installation (Windows XP - 16 December 2008) with a missing DLL.

XanaNews

XanaNews is a free newsreader for Windows (98 and onward) that you can download from http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/xananews.htm, the latest (as of January 2009) version is Version 1.18.1.6 released 6th December 2006. Source code is available (written in Delphi).

Casual testing indicates that it is capable of both sending and receiving APL code.

Test Environment: Windows XP SP3, Dyalog 12.0.5. Test procedure was to both type APL characters into a "compose" window and to cut/paste from a Dyalog session. Parts of the sent-and-received posting were cut/pasted back into a Dyalog session to check for executability and any character differences generated in the transmission.

Configuration Settings:

• Keyboard option (for XP): UK Dyalog AltGr

• Account Properties/Derived Settings/User Preferences/Default Character Set: UTF-8
• Account Properties/Derived Settings/Posting Settings/Default Character Set: UTF-8
• Newsgroup Properties/Derived Settings/User Preferences/Default Character Set: UTF-8
• Newsgroup Properties/Derived Settings/Posting Settings/Default Character Set: UTF-8
• Newsgroup Properties/Derived Settings/Posting Settings/Text Format: NNTP
• Options/Colours and Fonts/Message Tree/Font Name: APL385 Unicode
• Options/Colours and Fonts/Message Pane/Font Name: APL385 Unicode
• Options/Colours and Fonts/Message Editor/Font Name: APL385 Unicode

Notes:

• Typing APL was not very successful; although font selection is honoured the majority of APL characters are rendered as ?
• Copy/paste on the other hand appeared to work flawlessly. The test copy/paste body was 14↓⎕av (apologies for using this archaic form), essentially trying to omit the awkward stuff at the start.

• How viable someone finds XanaNews for APL content is likely to depend on how much they value being able to type APL directly into the post composition window.

• Whether XanaNews could be modified to overcome the typing issue has not been explored.

• It has not been determined whether postings generated using XanaNews in this way are compatible with other newsreaders.

XNews

So far as I can tell XNews(5.04.25) can't be configured to either send or receive as Unicode

Mac

Mail Clients

NewsReaders

Linux

Mail Clients

NewsReaders

CategoryGeneralHowTo CategoryUnicode