1.2.5.15

[tisazalay]

Thanks, yes I tried latest development build.  I had communications with Kostya back in march regarding this, he was very kind to explain that it happens because of IMAP servers are allowed to do anything with special characters (accents) when they occur in message headers that aren't properly encoded.
Gmail IMAP servers replaces those characters with the non printable character (small question mark on a black diamond), and Aquamail never gets to see the original characters to recover it (it's a one way replacement).
He also pointed out that other mail apps (Gmail, K9, Outlook) use IMAP differently, where Aquamail is centered around the needs of a mobile app (being able to download attachments separately from the main message) and strangely enough it's related.

The most compatible app to read the messages has been Outlook (desktop never ever has shown the non printable character neither on Titles nor on body), then Gmail (but it changes the background color of the messages, for example from yellow to white), then K9 that shows correct colors, and characters but in very rare occurrences may display the non printable character (noticed it in 1 of over 5,000 messages).

I know 0 about developing an app, and maybe it's something absurd to ask but I would really like the possibility to have the ability to parse IMAP like Gmail/k9 do, or the way Aquamail does, on a electable way (toggle a settings option). My guess is it would require 2 parsing/downloading engines to then feed data to the display part.

Thanks for all the help and attention.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

If those special characters are in message headers (from / to / subject), then my original explanation still stands:

- IMAP servers are allowed to replace / ignore / remove non-ASCII characters in message headers

- Of all the IMAP servers I know, GMail's is the only one that does that... and the changes are irreversible

- My code has logic to work with malformed messages (missing charset spec, etc.), but the changes Gmail makes are irreversible

Now about other apps and different ways to use IMAP..... My code is written to use server side message parsing... This lets the app download message text and attachments separately from each other, which is a big benefit on mobile devices. Because of this, I don't see the way my app works with IMAP changing, ever.

Strictly speaking, messages without a charset spec are invalid (other than those that only use US-ASCII).

[tisazalay]

Thanks. I understand. Besides it's only a mail list that's very badly designed. Maybe I can ask them to update their messages to be properly coded.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Asking the senders to fix the encoding is the right thing to do. The only right thing to do.

( PS - I wonder why with so many utility libraries for sending mail out there, for pretty much any programming language, so many mailing lists / advert mailings / e-commerce sites / etc. get it wrong? )

[tisazalay]

Please don't laugh at me... nah, please do so (I'm LOL at myself)

I found a really easy solution to my problem..... POP3 download. The messages are displayed perfectly, I can use with the recent: and also with the options in the client to leave messages, etc.

What I will try now is to set a "tasker" task to invoke downloading mail when another app, ie. gmail, has a notification, that way I get push for gmail with pop3 in aquamail. If you now of an already profile/task for such scenario, please point me to it.

Created a profile/task in 3 minutes. Now when I get a push notification in K9, it runs AquaMail and POPs the message, I disabled all auto sync of AM so I don't drain more battery. Great!

Anyway, THANKS for all the support and mainly for mentioning it was a side effect of IMAP... that helped...

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Ah, yes, when you use POP3, the app downloads original message content, including the headers (that's just how POP3 works)... and then has a chance to apply its own "automagic" logic to guess the missing charsets...