character display partially corrupted when using sendEmail together with yahoo mail

Rosika · 08-18-2019, 06:10 AM

Hello altogether,

I´ve got a question regarding the use of sendEmail (v 1.56) which I use from Linux/Lubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, 64 bit.
Info about it can be found here: http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/ .

Basically it´s a command line SMTP email client.

There´s a peculiar phenomenon which only occurs when using my e-mail account "yahoo.de".

When sending an e-mail that includes umlauts like "ü" or "ä" and also "ß" those are transmitted by yahoo as "??".

Example: instead of "kürzlich" it´s rather "k??rzlich" which is being sent.

This seems to be due to the fact that Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit is used when delivering the e-mail. And it´s just that with which yahoo mail has got a problem. But not other e-mail services like gmx for example.

So basically what I need is a special command-line option with which sendEmail can deliver the e-mail with "quoted printable" instead.
This should theortically solve the problem.

Is there a way of achieving this?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Gretings.
Rosika

rosehosting.com · 08-18-2019, 10:24 AM

When sending an email which includes non-ASCII characters, try to add this command-line parameter: -o message-charset=utf-8

Rosika · 08-18-2019, 10:35 AM

@rosehosting.com:

Thanks for the suggestion. Alas adding the parameter -o message-charset=utf-8 had no effect.

I tried it and the e-mail was received with false character representation nevertheless.

Looking through the source text of the received mail I found the following info:

Code:

Content-Type: text/plain;
        charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

It´s the Content-Transfer-Encoding bit I wanted to change with a special parameter. It should be quoted printable.
But I´m afraid there´s no way of achieving this.

But thanks for your help anyway.

Greetings.
Rosika

scasey · 08-18-2019, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rosika

@rosehosting.com:

Thanks for the suggestion. Alas adding the parameter -o message-charset=utf-8 had no effect.

I tried it and the e-mail was received with false character representation nevertheless.

Looking through the source text of the received mail I found the following info:

Code:

Content-Type: text/plain;
        charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

It´s the Content-Transfer-Encoding bit I wanted to change with a special parameter. It should be quoted printable.
But I´m afraid there´s no way of achieving this.

But thanks for your help anyway.

Greetings.
Rosika

Boy, that suggestion was right out of the documentation, and it looks like it did set the charset...
Try experimenting with that -o option:

Code:

-o message-content-transfer-encoding="quoted printable"

(that's a complete guess on my part...)

what does the --help option show you about -o ?

EDIT: Looks like that project is untouched for the last 10 years. Maybe dig into the source? Docs say it's written in perl.

Rosika · 08-19-2019, 07:28 AM

Hi scasey,

thanks a lot for your reply.

I tried your suggestion by inserting -o message-content-transfer-encoding="quoted printable" in the command.
Yet it had the same effect. The e-mail was sent but the umlauts were currupted the same way.
Curious though that the exit code of the command was still 0:

Code:

rosika@rosika-Lenovo-H520e ~> echo $status 
0

So sendEmail didn´t really seem to mind that I inserted it.

sendEmail --help says:

Code:

-o NAME=VALUE             advanced options, for details try: --help misc
        -o message-content-type=<auto|text|html>
        -o message-file=FILE         -o message-format=raw
        -o message-header=HEADER     -o message-charset=CHARSET
        -o reply-to=ADDRESS          -o timeout=SECONDS
        -o username=USERNAME         -o password=PASSWORD
        -o tls=<auto|yes|no>         -o fqdn=FQDN

So the option you provided doesn´t seem to exist (at least not in that form). Yet it was worth a shot.

It looks like sendEmail doesn´t provide a means to manipulate message-content-transfer-encoding.

At least we tried.

Thanks again for your help.

Greetings.
Rosika