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Date:      Mon, 18 Aug 1997 01:27:44 -0500
From:      Benjamin Lewis <blewis@vet.purdue.edu>
To:        "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG, Shimon@i-Connect.Net
Subject:   Re: "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-8" 
Message-ID:  <199708180627.BAA17303@ylana.vet.purdue.edu>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 17 Aug 1997 16:50:18 %2B0200." <199708171450.QAA07750@desk.jhs.no_domain> 

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"Julian H. Stacey" wrote:
>Each time I read a freebsd list mail item from 
>	Simon Shapiro <Shimon@i-Connect.Net>
>(on current & stable lists)
>using my EXMH 1.6.9 his mail displays in a truly horrible font,
>partially thickened (like numbers on a bank cheque, hell to read)
>I asked him about it, but he didn't know what I meant, so I tracked it
>down, it's the 
>	"; charset=iso-8859-8"
>component of his
>	Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-8
>I don't see it from anyone else.
>
>I'd like to know:
>- Do other people see this truly horrible font ?
>- is his header OK / not OK ?,
>- or is it my mail reader (EXMH 1.6.9) throwing a fit ? (& why ?)
>  it occurs to me it might be an exmh font scaling problem, as I recall
>  I use a larger than standard font.
>  (I append my .exmh-defaults at end of mail)
>- or some thing else I'v not considered ?

I see it with exmh-2.0zeta, and I believe it is just that the fonts 
below are ugly:

[snip]

>My system:
>xlsfonts|grep iso8859-8
>-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-75-75-c-0-iso8859-8
>-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-100-100-100-c-80-iso8859-8
>-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-c-80-iso8859-8
>-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--0-0-75-75-c-0-iso8859-8
>-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-100-100-100-c-60-iso8859-8
>-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-8

The following recommendations are pure speculation, based upon the exmh
help files and the app-defaults file.  I've never tried any of them
myself.

It seems to me that there are two options.  One can either locate nicer
fonts with iso8859-8 encoding, or force exmh to use the iso8859-1 fonts
instead (and end up with a few miscoded characters in the e-mail).  In
either case, you will have to look through the app-defaults file in 
/usr/local/lib/exmh-(whatever), and then modify your .exmh-defaults file.

Here are some interesting sections of the app-defaults file:

! For each defined character set, we need to know the registry and
! encoding used to find the fonts.
! US-ASCII is a subset of all the ISO-8859 character sets, so we can
! wildcard the encoding for it.  ISO-8859-1 and ISO-8859-8 ship with
! X11r5, so they're defined here.  Any addtional charsets which exist at
! your site should be defined here.
*mime_us-ascii_registry:        iso8859
*mime_us-ascii_encoding:        *
*mime_iso-8859-1_registry:      iso8859
*mime_iso-8859-1_encoding:      1
*mime_iso-8859-8_registry:      iso8859
*mime_iso-8859-8_encoding:      8
!
For the second option above, one might add the following line to one's 
.exmh-defaults file:

*mime_iso-8859-8_encoding:      1

Later in the app-defaults file, there is this secion:

! For each charset, we have four differerent possible ways that the
! characters may be displayed.  "plain" is how they are displayed in
! an ordinary (text/plain) message; "fixed" is how fixed face
! characters are displayed in enriched text; "proportional" is how
! proportional face characters are displayed in enriched text; and
! "title" is how part headers are displayed.
!
! The list which follows are families which provide this style for
! this character set in order of preference.  If none of the familes
! are found for a particular characterset/display style,  a wildcard
! is used for the family.
! These may be overridden by users.
*mime_us-ascii_plain_families:  fixed clean lucidatypewriter courier terminal
*mime_us-ascii_fixed_families:  lucidatypewriter fixed clean courier terminal
*mime_us-ascii_proportional_families:   times "new century schoolbook" \
                                        lucidabright charter lucida helvetica
*mime_us-ascii_title_families:  times "new century schoolbook" \
                                lucidabright charter lucida helvetica
*mime_iso-8859-1_plain_families:        lucidatypewriter fixed courier terminal
*mime_iso-8859-1_fixed_families:        lucidatypewriter fixed courier terminal
*mime_iso-8859-1_proportional_families: times "new century schoolbook" \
                                        lucidabright charter lucida helvetica
*mime_iso-8859-1_title_families:        times "new century schoolbook" \
                                lucidabright charter lucida helvetica
*mime_iso-8859-8_plain_families:        fixed
*mime_iso-8859-8_fixed_families:        fixed
*mime_iso-8859-8_proportional_families: 
*mime_iso-8859-8_title_families:        
!


If you found some nice iso8859-8 fonts, you could add some lines to
.exmh-defaults to reflect that fact.  Something like:

*mime_iso-8859-8_plain_families:        courier fixed
*mime_iso-8859-8_fixed_families:        courier fixed
*mime_iso-8859-8_proportional_families: times helvetica
*mime_iso-8859-8_title_families:        times helvetica

If you just want to force exmh to use the wrong encoding, you could 
duplicate the lines for iso-8859-1 above, and fake it for iso-8859-8
(as well as the other change):

*mime_iso-8859-8_plain_families:        lucidatypewriter fixed courier terminal
*mime_iso-8859-8_fixed_families:        lucidatypewriter fixed courier terminal
*mime_iso-8859-8_proportional_families: times "new century schoolbook" \
                                        lucidabright charter lucida helvetica
*mime_iso-8859-8_title_families:        times "new century schoolbook" \
                                lucidabright charter lucida helvetica

There is an exmh-users mailing list that has been very helpful to me.  
Send "subscibe exmh-users" to Majordomo@sunlabs.eng.Sun.COM to 
subscribe.

Hope this helps,

-Ben

-- 
                   |  "I support efforts to limit the terms of members of      
Benjamin Lewis     |   Congress, especially members of the House and members   
bhlewis@purdue.edu |   of the Senate."                                         
                   |    -- Vice-President Dan Quayle                           





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