Sending and Receiving E-Mail in Chinese With Netscape

Sending and Receiving E-Mail in Chinese With Netscape Mail

Netscape Mail as Sending E-mail Client:

Netscape Mail can write and send e-mail messages in Chinese using Microsoft’s Chinese Input Method Editors for simplified and traditional Chinese. In the body of the e-mail message, simply click on the language bar or language button on the task bar (this will be present after installing Microsoft’s Chinese language support and Input Method Editors (IME), and by default is indicated by the button EN for English). Then select the appropriate language: CN (PRC) for simplified or CN (Taiwan) for traditional.

If you compose the message and then try to send it without changing the Character Coding to Chinese, you get a warning message “The message you compose contains characters not found in the selected Character Coding, so your message may become unreadable after you send or save it. To send and save it anyway, click OK. To return to the Composer window where you can choose a different Character Coding, click Cancel.” You should cancel, select either traditional or simplified Chinese (whichever you are using) from the View/Character Coding submenu, and then send your message.

Receiving E-Mail Client	Netscape Mail 7.0 as Sending E-Mail Client
Eudora 5.1.1
Hotmail (English)
MyRealBox: Web
Netscape Mail 7.0
OperaMail
Outlook Express 6.0
Outlook 2002
Outlook Web Access
Pegasus Mail 4.02
Yahoo Mail
Total no. of receiving e-mail clients correctly decoding messages sent by Netscape Mail 7.0	8

	Message cannot be read or decoded.
	Message appears correctly as is.
	Message appears as code initially, but if you select traditional or simplified Chinese depending on its original coding from the View/Encoding submenu, it will display properly.
	Message appears as code initially after you opened it in its own window. But if you close the message window, select traditional or simplified Chinese depending on its original coding, and then re-open the message, it will display correctly.

Chinese messages sent by Netscape Mail can be read by all e-mail receiving clients except Eudora and Outlook Web Access. Netscape messages do require manual selection of Chinese encoding by Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Pegasus Mail readers. Along with Hotmail with Chinese as the preferred language and Outlook Express 6.0, Netscape Mail 7.0 never requires the manual selection of Japanese encoding to interpret Chinese messages, unlike Hotmail (English), OperaMail, Outlook 2002, Outlook Web Access, and Yahoo Mail.

Netscape Mail as Receiving E-mail Client:

Netscape Mail is one of the best receiving e-mail client for Chinese messages, reading correctly 11 out of 13 sending formats tested. Only Outlook 2002 does better. Messages sent by Hotmail with English as preferred language, Yahoo Mail and OperaMail itself do require manual selection of Japanese as encoding format by the Netscape Mail reader.

Sending E-Mail Client	Netscape Mail 7.0 as Receiving E-Mail Client
Hotmail
English as Preferred Language
Chinese as Preferred Language
Netscape Mail 7.0
OperaMail
Outlook Express 6.0:
HTML/Unicode
HTML/As Is
Plain/Unicode
Plain/As Is
Outlook 2002:
HTML
Rich Text
Plain Text
Outlook Web Access
Yahoo Mail
Total no. of sending formats correctly decoded by Netscape Mail 7.0	11

Message appears as code initially, but if you select Japanese (Shift_JIS) from View/Character coding/More/East Asian submenu, it will display properly.

Recommendations:

Netscape Mail is an excellent choice for both writing and reading Chinese messages.

Please email me your comments, suggestions, and corrections.