[VM] Using VM for 19 years, still can't solve "iconv: (stdin):21:31: cannot convert"

[edburns]

Hello VM users,

I don't know how many of us there are left, but I've stubbornly been
using VM for at least nineteen years and I'm still mostly satisfied.
One problem I can no longer passively tolerate is this "iconv:
(stdin):21:31: cannot convert".

Certain mails are unable to render completely due to some special
characters. In these cases, the INBOX Presentation buffer abruptly
terminates with that iconv message.

Can anyone please help? I can share a complete anonymized email if
necessary, just let me send it to you in email. In the absence of that,
here is my stack:

Os: SunOS foo 5.10 Generic_144489-05 i86pc i386 i86pc
Emacs: 21.4 (patch 22) \"Instant Classic\" XEmacs Lucid
vm: 8.0.12-devo-585
iconv: iconv --version
iconv (GNU libiconv 1.13)
Copyright (C) 2000-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Written by Bruno Haible.

Somewhere along the line I picked up this:

;Message-ID: ***@chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk

(setq vm-mime-charset-converter-alist
'(
("utf-8" "iso-8859-1" "iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1")
("windows-1252" "iso-8859-1" "iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1")
)
)

in a previous attempt to fix this difficult problem.

I was going to paste an excerpt of the mail, but it can't even paste the
special characters but they show up as similar to

(LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX)\200\223

replacing the all caps in parenthesis with the actual character, unicode
U+00E2.

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

Sincerely,
Ed Burns

[edburns]

EB> Somewhere along the line I picked up this:

EB> ;Message-ID: ***@chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk

EB> (setq vm-mime-charset-converter-alist
EB> '(
EB> ("utf-8" "iso-8859-1" "iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1")
EB> ("windows-1252" "iso-8859-1" "iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1")
EB> )
EB> )

EB> in a previous attempt to fix this difficult problem.

The above tip, plus the iconv manpage fixed the problem. I added the -c
option to the iconv invocation:

Options controlling conversion problems:

-c When this option is given, characters that cannot be
converted are silently discarded, instead of leading to
a conversion error.

and this allowed the problem emails to render correctly.

Ed

[Uday Reddy]

Post by edburns
Os: SunOS foo 5.10 Generic_144489-05 i86pc i386 i86pc
Emacs: 21.4 (patch 22) \"Instant Classic\" XEmacs Lucid
vm: 8.0.12-devo-585

If you pick up the current beta version of XEmacs, you probably won't need
iconv. It will know how to deal with MIME character sets.

vm 8.0.12-devo-585 seems like quite an old unofficial version of VM. Please
get vm 8.1.12 from the VM home page.

---

There are probably quite a few VM users, but they are generally passive,
just as you have been. So, we don't hear from them. VM has had the
appearance of a dying creed because of this lack of participation by the VM
community. I am not sure if open source projects can survive for very long
without having a band of enthusiastic supporters who carry the flag and
evangelize.

We all have to put in some amount of effort, depending on what we can
afford. Upgrading your software at least once a year and checking the
mailing list periodically would qualify as the minimum required.

Cheers,
Uday

[John Stoffel]

Uday> There are probably quite a few VM users, but they are generally
Uday> passive, just as you have been. So, we don't hear from them.

I take exception to this personally. I try to be active but since I
have zero elisp skills (and honestly don't want to relearn lisp again
if I can help it), I can't contribute code to the project.

I also think that while Uday does a great job in general, the lack of
releases coming out is disheartening. I know his time is short, but
it's been years since 8.2.0b came out, and nothign since.

Uday> VM has had the appearance of a dying creed because of this lack
Uday> of participation by the VM community. I am not sure if open
Uday> source projects can survive for very long without having a band
Uday> of enthusiastic supporters who carry the flag and evangelize.

I do try to evangelize. But hey, maybe I need to put my money where
my mouth is and learn elisp enough so I can submit patches to the
code.

John

[Rene]

Post by John Stoffel
I also think that while Uday does a great job in general,

I agree with this.

Post by John Stoffel
the lack of releases coming out is disheartening.
I know his time is short, but it's been years since 8.2.0b came out,
and nothign since.

I also agree with this.

Post by John Stoffel
I do try to evangelize.

Not easy when 99% of the people in my environment don't even know Emacs.
And for the remaining 1% they use gnus.

This makes me wonder whether I should migrate to GNUS myself.

Does anyone know of a good recent tutorial for such a migration from VM to
GNUS? I wouldn't dare migrating without some help.

[Uday Reddy]

Post by John Stoffel
I take exception to this personally. I try to be active but since I
have zero elisp skills (and honestly don't want to relearn lisp again
if I can help it), I can't contribute code to the project.

I don't mean to suggest that those of you that participate in the
viewmail-info mailing list are "passive". But there are somewhere around
600-1000 downloads of VM on the Launchpad web site. The vast majority of
these users are "passive". Either VM is working perfectly fine for them, or
they are not interested in resolving whatever problems they face.

Post by John Stoffel
I do try to evangelize. But hey, maybe I need to put my money where
my mouth is and learn elisp enough so I can submit patches to the
code.

I know that elisp skills will be quite limited in the community. But,
perhaps, somebody can volunteer to create a release from the current trunk
and field the issues that might arise?

Cheers,
Uay

[Alan Wehmann]

Post by Uday Reddy

Post by edburns
Os: SunOS foo 5.10 Generic_144489-05 i86pc i386 i86pc
Emacs: 21.4 (patch 22) \"Instant Classic\" XEmacs Lucid
vm: 8.0.12-devo-585

If you pick up the current beta version of XEmacs, you probably won't need
iconv. It will know how to deal with MIME character sets.
vm 8.0.12-devo-585 seems like quite an old unofficial version of VM. Please
get vm 8.1.12 from the VM home page.
---
There are probably quite a few VM users, but they are generally passive,
just as you have been. So, we don't hear from them. VM has had the
appearance of a dying creed because of this lack of participation by the VM
community. I am not sure if open source projects can survive for very long
without having a band of enthusiastic supporters who carry the flag and
evangelize.
We all have to put in some amount of effort, depending on what we can
afford. Upgrading your software at least once a year and checking the
mailing list periodically would qualify as the minimum required.
Cheers,
Uday

I moved from Emacs 19.34 to XEmacs and then back to Emacs 23 (I won't
explain the reasons why). I went from Rmail to VM. I've used
Compuserve email, then Eudora, now Thunderbird for personal email (my
wife's too). I once was a Gnus user (for newsgroups) and even learned
how to set Gnus up for mail via SSL. I am an enthusiastic supporter of
VM. My experience in switching back, from XEmacs to Emacs, was very
positive--in hindsight. I'd venture to guess that a serious VM user is
better off with Emacs, than with XEmacs--based on my experience. I
suspect that those who delve into the VM code nowadays are using Emacs
much more than XEmacs.

[edburns]

Post by Uday Reddy
If you pick up the current beta version of XEmacs, you probably won't need
iconv. It will know how to deal with MIME character sets.

If I download the current beta and build from source, is the VM in there?

Ed

[Uday Reddy]

Post by edburns

Post by Uday Reddy
If you pick up the current beta version of XEmacs, you probably won't need
iconv. It will know how to deal with MIME character sets.

If I download the current beta and build from source, is the VM in there?

There is always a VM package in XEmacs, but I can't say how old it might be.
XEmacs/VM users are even more passive than Gnu Emacs/VM users. There is
nobody willing to take the time to package up a current VM for XEmacs. What
can I say?

If VM is an important part of your life (it something like 20-50% of my
life), then you want to have total control over which VM version you use and
how it is installed. The only way to get such control is to install it
yourself. You cannot depend on somebody else to do it, especially when they
are all unpaid volunteers contributing their spare time.

Cheers,
Uday

[Julian Bradfield]

Post by Uday Reddy
XEmacs/VM users are even more passive than Gnu Emacs/VM users. There is
nobody willing to take the time to package up a current VM for XEmacs. What
can I say?

Ahem. There is no current VM. When there's a release that works (as
opposed to the beta from your personal repository), I'll try to
package it!

[Uday Reddy]

Post by Julian Bradfield
Ahem. There is no current VM. When there's a release that works (as
opposed to the beta from your personal repository), I'll try to
package it!

Thanks Julian! The "current VM" for public purposes is 8.1.12. But, the
last time I checked, the version in XEmacs is something like 8.0.5!

Cheers,
Uday

[John Stoffel]

Post by Julian Bradfield
Ahem. There is no current VM. When there's a release that works (as
opposed to the beta from your personal repository), I'll try to
package it!

Uday> Thanks Julian! The "current VM" for public purposes is 8.1.12.
Uday> But, the last time I checked, the version in XEmacs is something
Uday> like 8.0.5!

Why can't you just release 8.2.0b as 8.2.0? It's not like it hasn't
been out there for ages and ages...