Hey mark!

 ml> what character set i read in should not matter one iota to you

Then you'll be happy to know that it doesn't.  In fact it doesn't matter one
iota to me if you don't use the CHRS control line.

 ml> so your system can possibly convert and display my message

If it actually ever contained any CP437 characters EVER then it might be an
issue but I doubt it would.  I do check by hand every once and awhile when a
Russian sysop claims CP866 and actually has some CP866 characters in their
message but haven't done that for quite some time.  The last time I saw any
actual CP437 characters in a fidonet message none of them had anything to do
with text, they were line drawing characters used for so-called ascii art which
of course is wrong since CP437 characters are not ascii no matter what any
misguided sysop claims.

 ml> display my message in your local character set

No matter what, your messages always display fine in utf-8 despite the fact
they never are any 8 bit or multibyte characters.  Even if there were it
wouldn't matter any.  Of course the other way around - you displaying utf-8
characters in any character set other than utf-8 - will never ever work no
matter what I put in a control line.  It will never, ever work especially not
utf-8 Dansk characters  CP437.  Also cyrillic languages which seems the more
likely scenerio in this particular echo (Russian sysops and CP866).  It cannot
be done, with or without a CHRS control line.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.4.12(1)-release (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)