Unicode Folder Names Support

[Dominic LoBue]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Horacio Sanson <hsanson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 12:15:57PM +0900, Horacio Sanson wrote:
>>
>> I just started using offlineimap and I can tell my mutt client is
>> lighting fast. There is just a single problem, that I have Japanese
>> named folders and they look like: "&MLkwrTDrMKIwwzDXMLgw4zDRMPM-"
>>
>> This is a known problem, see here:
>> http://software.complete.org/software/issues/show/102
>>
>> I was looking at the documentation and found the nametrans option rather
>> interesting. I new to offlineimap and I have no idea about python so I
>> would like to ask the experts, before I delete my IMAP folders, if it is
>> possible to use this feature to convert the garbled folder names to
>> something that mutt can display correctly?
>>
>> Something like (remember I have no clue how to use Python):
>>
>> nametrans = lambda foldername: re.sub('any folder', 'to_utf8(foldername)', foldername)
>>
>
> I got something working that fixed my problem, see link below for
> details, but is an ugly hack that requires modification of the
> offlineimap python code to add conversion from the IMAP4 UTF-7 encoding to
> UTF-8 encoding.
>
> I would like to get some help here to integrate my code better with
> offlineimap. The ideal would be to convert all IMAP folder names from
> UTF-7 to a default, maybe UTF-8, encoding when manipulating local
> repositories.  Even more ideal would be to add an option to the
> configuration file that would allow users to select their desired
> encoding to handle all folders in the local repository.
>
> I am afraid my python knowledge is below zero but no so my programming
> skill. All I need to know is exactly were is the best place to add my
> UTF-7 to UTF-8 coversion code and where is the best place to perform the
> conversion without breaking the folderfilter and nametrans mechanisms. or
> any other part of offlineimap.
>
> Here is a blog post on my little solution:
> http://piao-tech.blogspot.com/2010/03/get-offlineimap-working-with-non-ascii.html
>
>
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>
> OfflineIMAP homepage: http://software.complete.org/offlineimap
>

Horacio,

I'm glad you found a solution that works for you.

I am working on a rewrite of OfflineIMAP and I will definitely keep
your suggestions in mind, and do what I can to make sure that UTF-8
encoding works "out of the box".

To answer your question, the best place for the code snippets you
listed in your blog post would be in separate config file that you
would then include using the pythonfile setting. Here's a copy of the
default configuration file fully annotated:
http://software.complete.org/software/repositories/entry/offlineimap/offlineimap.conf

The specific setting I'm speaking of is:
# You can give a Python source filename here and all config file
# python snippets will be evaluated in the context of that file.
# This allows you to e.g. define helper functions in the Python
# source file and call them from this config file.  You can find
# an example of this in the manual.
#
# pythonfile = ~/.offlineimap.py

I believe this will do what you want.

-- 
Dominic LoBue