mail to different language users

searain

If I set

"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1;\r\n"

when I use the mail() function, will it affect some users in different language set up and different character set up?

Or no matter I set the "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1;\r\n" or "Content-Type: text/plain; \r\n", NO DIFFERENCE to the different langauge set up users?

What is the difference between the "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1;\r\n" or "Content-Type: text/plain; \r\n" in terms of the e-mail receipent will see my e-mail?

Thanks!

vaaaska

Wouldn't you want to use utf-8?

searain

This is for a European web site, we cannot forsee what the user will set up the language set of their computer.

I don't which set up is the best.

Is utf-8 for unicode? will some users have problem with that?

Now I use "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1;\r\n", most of the cases, it is fine. But once a while, some users (maybe with very old or very strange language set up have some problems.

Such as

1,455.90

turned to be

1,455!.90

very strange! any help?

By the way, if I send HTML e-mail to an user who cannot read HTML e-mail, I assume it will only lose the format and table etc. But how come 1,455.90 become 1,455!.90, any one knows?

Specially Dutch people? that was in a Dutch e-mail by the way.

vaaaska

Well, from my massive amounts of tinkering around with things utf-8 does the trick. Lately, it's all I use for English, French and Spanish.

Those Dutch are a crazy lot anyways. 😉

I never setup email/newsletter systems to use html - so many people don't view email that way and it's much more likely to be trapped in a spam filter (which is perfectly fine with me if it is spam).

I have been searching for some answers to foreign language text encoding issues lately with very little results found - it's frustrating.

Good luck...v