Re: [Nmh-workers] mhshow/test-charset failures in nmh-1.7 (`Can't convert ?us-ascii to UTF-8')

[David Levine]

Leonardo wrote:

> (But, I think that this shouldn't matter according my code reading
> of relevant parts of nmh test suite because the test suite correctly
> inject them in the environment.)

Yes, that was the intent.

> And, with NetBSD iconv(1) I have:
>
>  % printf '\xe4' | /usr/bin/iconv -f EBCDIC-US -t UTF-8
>  U

Same here with GNU iconv(1) on Linux.

> ...while with iconv(1) provided by the `libiconv' package:
>
>  % printf '\xe4' | /usr/pkg/bin/iconv -f EBCDIC-US -t UTF-8
>  /usr/pkg/bin/iconv: conversion from EBCDIC-US unsupported
>  /usr/pkg/bin/iconv: try '/usr/pkg/bin/iconv -l' to get the list of supported 
> encodings
>  % echo $?
>  1
>
> So, in if GNU iconv(1) is available `$skip_param_value_checks' is
> set to 1.

OK, the reason is that EBCDIC-US isn't known.  Does /usr/pkg/bin/iconv -l
list another suitable character encoding, such as EBCDIC-UK?  The test
uses an EBCDIC encoding to show that it really does a non-trivial
translation, but it could use a different one.

> I'm now curious if apart FreeBSD and NetBSD with `libiconv' package
> installed what happens on other platforms, just checking the exit status
> of: >
>  $ printf '\xe4' | iconv -f EBCDIC-US -t UTF-8
>
> will be probably enough.

I get the same result as you:  U with 0 exit status.

> If the exit status is 0 and then, in test-charset context
> `$skip_param_value_checks' is 0, what happens if you try (this is
> stolen entirely from 'replacement character in parameter value'
> test in test-charset):
>
>  $ printf "Subject: invalid parameter value charset\nMIME-Version: 
> 1.0\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset*=invalid''%%0Dus-ascii\n" | \
>  mhshow -file - | cat
>
> Here, I have:
>
> | Subject: invalid parameter value charset
> | 
> | mhshow: Can't convert ?us-ascii to UTF-8
> | mhshow: unable to convert character set from ?us-ascii, continuing...
> | [ part  - text/plain -   0B  ]

That was the intent, too.  Based on Ralph's (re-?)discovery that the charset
name gets normalised by GNU iconv, I see now why the test behaved differently
on the FreeBSD 10 buildbot.

I reworked test-charset to reflect that.  It still uses EBCDIC-US.

David