gnus-article-decode-charset

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Aka `(C-u) W M C' in summary buffer.

I often try to use this command when a message I get is apparently
mis-decoded (due to faulty header info or whatever), but it rarely seems to
work like I expect it to, and often doesn't give useful results at all.
I'm wondering if I'm using it incorrectly, or whether it's broken.

The main problem is:  What version of the message does W M C operate on?

What I _expect_ is that it would

  (1) fetch the original message,
  (2) remove any mime wrapping like base-64, resulting in a unibyte buffer
      full of raw message bytes, and then
  (3) just call (decode-coding-region ... 'whatever)

Sometimes it appears to be trying to operate on whatever the currently
_displayed_ contents are, which is usually completely wrong.  If I try to
work around this by manually fetching the "original" message using `C-u g',
that usually fails to work too, either because the original is base-64
encoded, or even when that's not true, apparently because the way it
displays the raw bytes isn't what W M C is expecting.

Also, since I often need to guess and try several different encodings
before I find the proper one, it's generally more convenient if it starts
from the beginning each time (applying decoding X to the failed results of
decoding Y usually doesn't work very well :-).

Anyway, any comments on how this command does/should work?

Thanks,

-Miles

-- 
I'd rather be consing.