sending text email with iso-8859-1 chars

[Anon]

Hi,

I have a question relating to a script that sends plain text emails using the mail() function. The subject of the email contained an apostrophe (') and the body contained several acute A (á). The problem was that in my clients outlook express 2000 the apostrophe in the subject came out as a question mark.

Eventually, I got it to work by trying many headers on the email, this worked OK

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

But, I dont fully understand what was going on. Firstly, I thought that the headers had no affect on the subject, just the body.

Next, I think iso-8859-1 is an 8 bit code, so, did sendmail or PHP convert it to 7 bit before transmission? Or, is that something that I sould do to the email body?

Any explaination would be very helpful.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Anon]

here is my MIME email function... seems to work for me:

play with the charset a bit more to figure the rest out. or read some instructions on MIME protocol

function mime_email($to, $from, $subject, $body) {
global $file, $file_name;
$datatosend = "HELO localhost\nMAIL FROM: $from\nRCPT TO: $to\nDATA\nSubject: $subject\n";
$datatosend .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"XX-JUST+A+BOUNDARY+13579\";\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\nThis is a MIME Encoded Message\n\n";
$datatosend .= "--XX-JUST+A+BOUNDARY+13579\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\n$body\n\n";
if($file != "none") {
$fp = fopen($file, "r");
$file_string = chunk_split(base64_encode(fread($fp, filesize($file))), 76, "\n");
fclose($fp);
$datatosend .= "--XX-JUST+A+BOUNDARY+13579\nContent-Type: application/unknown; name=\"$file_name\";\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: base64\nContent-Description: \"file attachment\"\n\n$file_string\n";
}
$datatosend .= "--XX-JUST+A+BOUNDARY+13579--\n";
$datatosend .= ".\nQUIT\n";
if($smtp_sock = fsockopen("your.email.server", 25)) {
$return = (fputs($smtp_sock, $datatosend));
fclose($smtp_sock);
}
return($return);
}