International Character Sets

Most languages may be sent using Lyris ListManager, either via email or through the web interface. When a message is sent via email, the client will select the appropriate header for the language you're sending in.

However, you will need to make some adjustments to the default ListManager settings if you send email messages using the web interface. By default, ListManager uses iso-8859-1 (western) encoding. The header must be changed to support international character sets.

The encoding and content type should be specified in one of two ways, depending on how you are sending mail using the web interface:

1. If you are using the Send Message shortcut, use Advanced Message Send. On Advanced Message Send (Page 2 of 2), edit the default character set, which is:

charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

2. If you (or your users) are using the Enter List button to use the Create a New Message screen, use the Append SMTP Header field in List Info to add the correct header to all messages being sent this way.

Either way, by specifying the encoding and content type transfer headers, the code will then be read as the intended language by the email client. Your message with its encoding should always be tested before sending to a live list.

International Character Sets

All of these character sets should be used with 8bit.

Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, etc (western) = iso-8859-1. Note that this is the default on most email clients.

Eastern European --Hungarian and Polish = iso-8859-2

Arabic = iso-8859-6

Japanese iso-2022-jp

Traditional Chinese = big5

Simplified Chinese = GB2312

Korean = EUC-KR

Additional Information for Using International Character Sets

Whenever possible, it is best to use ISO over any other type of encoding, except in the cases above. Although UNICODE (rtf-7 and rtf-8) is suppose to be universal, in our experience it is very difficult to work with and not compatible with many email clients.

Note that the characters themselves may or may not be visible depending on whether Language support is installed. However, it is not necessary that you have language input support installed. As long as the "source" of the email is correct, you should be able to read it if you have that particular language support (font) installed. Thus by taking iso-8859-1 as a generic base encoding, you can view any language in western encoding and then copy and paste the code into the web interface, select the language view on your web browser, and the langauge should be visable in it's proper character set.