What happens with encoding when a mail is received

[Tony Johansson]

Hi!

Some background information to my question. If you've ever received an
e-mail message or seen a Web page that seemed to have box character or
question marks where letters should appear, you have witnesses an encoding
problem.

Assume the following exist in a e-mail.
Content-Type: text/plain: charset=xyx

Will I get box characters or ? if the specified charset doesn't exist in
windows ?
So I mean will windows check if the specified charaset exist and if so use
this code page with the corresponding code points.

//Tony

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Some background information to my question. If you've ever received an
e-mail message or seen a Web page that seemed to have box character or
question marks where letters should appear, you have witnesses an encoding
problem.

Note that it is not all encoding problems that manifests themselves
that way. It is only encoding problems where a given byte is not valid
in the specified encoding.

Assume the following exist in a e-mail.
Content-Type: text/plain: charset=xyx

Will I get box characters or ? if the specified charset doesn't exist in
windows ?

Whether that is app specific or OS (lib) specific may depend
on the app.

Anyway - why not try it on your own PC?

Arne