Charset and umlaut handling in tin
==================================

Umlauts when reading
--------------------

After reading a posting from the newsserver tin checks if a charset has been
declared in the header. If not, tin assumes the appropiate entry of a
corresponding undeclared_charset variable in the attributes file. If there
still is no match, tin assumes US-ASCII as the charset for this posting.

After that the posting is converted to the local charset. This charset is
set in the so-called locales which are normally set via environment
variables (LANG, LC_*). If the posting contains characters not included in
the determined charset (e. g. 8 bit characters in a US-ASCII posting), these
characters are substituted by a question mark. This is also the case for
characters that cannot be displayed in the local charset. The now converted
posting is then displayed.


Umlauts when writing
--------------------

If you answer to a posting, the converted posting will be handed over to
your editor. The editor should be able to cope with characters in your local
charset, of course. Joe, for example, has difficulties with UTF-8, so you
shouldn't use it in such an environment. Finish your response in the editor
as normal and leave it to get back to tin.

When you post the message, tin determines the charset you want to use. You
set this charset with the variable mm_network_charset either in your
attributes file for the current group or globally in your tinrc file. The
later can also be done from the Menu (watch out for MM_NETWORK_CHARSET). Tin
then converts the posting (or the mail) from the local charset to the
mentioned charset. As when reading it might be possible that you used
characters locally that are not available in the destination charset. In
this case tin issues a warning so that you can replace the offending
characters. If you ignore the warning, these characters are again
substituted by question marks.


When you always see question marks
----------------------------------

First you should make sure that tin knows what local charset to use for
display. Tin normally uses "locale" for that. Just enter `locale` on your
console to find out, or `echo $LANG, $LC_TYPE`. You should get something
like "de_DE.ISO-8859-1" which is a language code (de in this case) followed
by an underscore, a country code (DE) followed by a dot, and a charset
(ISO-8859-1).

If you don't see a valid setting for your locale you should setup one for
yourself as described above. For example, in the US and for a UTF-8 capable
terminal you would use `LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8; export LC_CTYPE` in a bash or
ksh; the corresponding command for (t)csh is `setenv LC_TYPE en_US.UTF-8`.

As the next step you should configure a charset that tin assumes if there is
no charset declared in the header of a posting. This can be done via the
undeclared_charset variable in your attributes file (to be found in your
.tin directory:

scope=*
undeclared_charset=Windows-1252

This tells tin to assume the Windows-1252 charset. Since most people use
Windows nowadays and this charset is default for North Amerika and Western
Europe, and this charset is mostly compatible with the widespread ISO 8859-1
charset, this should cover many postings. For special newsgroups this
configuration should be improved by setting up another charset in a
different scope. For example, the pl.* hierarchy mostly uses ISO 8859-2:

scope=pl.*,cz.*,hin.*,sk.*,hr.*
undeclared_charset=ISO-8859-2

Especially in the Far East you may need further entries, for example:

scope=chinese.*,alt.chinese.text.big5,tw.*
undeclared_charset=Big5

scope=fj.*,jp.*,japan.*
undeclared_charset=ISO-2022-JP

If all these settings don't help you it is likely that the system locales
are broken or even not installed. If the latter is the case, you should
install an appropriate library (or let your administration do it for you if
you use a pre-configured environment). Libiconv from Bruno Haible is a good
choice.

If even this isn't possible the last alternative is to recompile tin. Invoke
`make distclean` and configure with --disable-locale added your normal
options. In this case tin assumes every posting to be in the local charset.
Note: This can screw up your terminal.
