E-mail from the GUI in UTF-8 format

Question

What do I need to know when sending e-mail from the GUI in UTF-8 format?

Answer

In version 20.1 there have been some UTF fixes. While it was previously possible to add and see the full set of UTF characters in the Cataloging template and in the OPAC, the UTF compliance has been greatly extended in version 20.1. Before 20.1, UTF characters were not correctly displayed for example in the item details (item description, call number), in the query line of the search tab, and in the fast cataloging screen. From version 20.1 on, all these problems have been solved.

Furthermore we recommend that all customers on version 20.1 or higher set their character set for outgoing emails to utf-8:

alephcom.ini
[Mail]
Charset=utf-8
CharsetBody=utf-8

The setup "Charset=iso-8859-1" which worked well in version 18 is not recommended anymore for customers on version 20.1 or higher.

When you switch to utf-8 format for outgoing emails, it might be necessary to change your mailhead.dat. This file is used only if you did NOT define "PLAIN-ONLY=Y" in $alephe_tab/tab100. The mailhead.dat file is not formatted in UTF-8 by default. If you use this file AND it contains umlauts or other special characters, you should change its format to UTF-8 and redistribute it among your colleagues (for example via version check). You can easily change the format under Unix with the following command:

iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t UTF-8 mailhead.old > mailhead.dat

where mailhead.old is the old mailhead.dat file in non-UTF format.

Additional Information

This KB item was originally released as "Tips & Advice" letter no. 51 by the European Support Team.
In Aleph 21 the following entries are no longer in use, because UTF-8 is used by default.
[Mail]
Charset=utf-8

Category: Background processing (500)

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013