Plugin charset_alias

[Teemu Huovila]

Hello

On 05.03.2018 23:46, MRob wrote:
> On 2018-03-02 09:57, Teemu Huovila wrote:
>> On 02.03.2018 09:38, MRob wrote:
>>> On 2018-03-01 22:59, John Woods wrote:
>>>> Hey Everyone,
>>>>
>>>>     We are getting a compile error for Dovecot 2.2.34 on Solaris 11.3
>>>> x86, using Solaris Studio 12.6 compiler, and it doesn't occur with
>>>> Dovecot 2.2.33.
>>>>
>>>>> Making all in charset-alias
>>>
>>> Can someone easily explain what the usage of this plugin is? Maybe example when it is helpful?
>> There is a short explanation at https://wiki2.dovecot.org/Plugins/CharsetAlias
>>
>> It is intended for mapping charactersets to work around some e.g.
>> Windows specific letters being lost when Dovecot converts mail to UTF8
>> using iconv.
> 
> I read that page so I wanted more real life example so I can learn should I install this plugin or is it for special use scenario cuz I'm not charset expert sorry. Your explain adds little bit more info but not enough to know do I need it or not. BTW not your fault-- I didn't ask myquestion good enough
> 
> If Dovecot has trouble to decode some windows charsets and the plugin fixes this problem then why is it a plugin and not built in as a fix?
As mail can in practise contain almost any type of text, either correctly or incorrectly encoded, taking every possible error condition into account in "built in" core code is not feasible.

This plugin can be used to work around some issues, but it is not useful for everybody. For your specific case, it is difficult to judge without knowing your userbase languages and mail clients in depth. I would say however, that if you do not know of any issues with mail content encoding, you probably should not enable this plugin.

br,
Teemu