pine and the char set thing

[Charles Hallenbeck]

I use pine and I get to see all those char set things too, but I
do not mind them a lot. What happens is that pine lets you
configure just one char set as its "official" char set, and when
an arriving message uses a different one, it warns you about it.
Perhaps that should be elevated to a "feature" in pine that could
be turned on or off, but right now it is a fixed behavior.

Users of speakup often listen to their mail "directly" - i.e.,
spontaneously, as it is placed on the screen. When that happens,
you cannot just skip ahead three or four lines to get past those
char set messages. What you can do is to kill the speech when
those messages start to appear, but then you lose your place and
must use review keys to go back and find what you would have
heard if you had just waited for the messages to be read and
proceed forward with the text. I think some folks do not rely on
the direct or spontaneous mode, but use review for everything.
They can easily kill a line they do not want to hear by just
hitting the "next line please" key. They will not lose their
place in the material the way people would who rely on direct
reading.

Anyway I kind of enjoy hearing those messages; it lets me know
who is still using Windows and who has kicked the habit. :-) If
David boehlman and others ever figure out how to fix their
Outlook Express to use the same char set as Pine is using, they
will in effect be "passing" and we will never ever know for
sure!!!

So even if it wastes five or six seconds per email, I cannot get
excited about those pesky messages. If it becomes a selectable
feature of Pine in a future release, so that it could be turned
off, I will probably leave mine turned on. People ought to be
able to use the char set of their choosing as long as it does not
interfere with the content of their messages.

Chuck


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