Text 6694, 56 rader
Skriven 2013-02-20 14:21:35 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
     Kommentar till en text av mark lewis (1:3634/12.42)
Ärende: LOL!
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Hello mark,

On Tuesday February 19 2013 17:39, you wrote to me:

 ml>> agreed but it also fouls up the works for existing systems...

 MvdV>> Hardly.

 ml> then how come björn's name appears as an o umlate sometimes and as a
 ml> division symbol at other times

Because some use CP437/CP850 encoding and some use Latin-1 encoding and the
CP437 only crowd is unable to do the conversion.

 ml>  and even worse as two incomprehensible graphical characters

Because some use UTF-8 encoding and not all can properly deal with that.

 ml>  that are not always the same two characters at other times??

Because some that convert, convert the wrong things.

 ml>  that's not fouling up the existing works??

As I wrote: hardly. For the ASCII/CP437 only crowd there is no problem as long
as they stay on their own turf. For the multilangual crowd it is no problem as
they have adapted years ago. If it is in Russian, you can't read it anyway.

It is only in these so called 'international' echos where the ASCII/CP437 only
crowd engages with the rest of the world that we see an occasional mangled
character. Not nice, but nothing really breaks and the problem is manageable.

Anyway, the foul up is no more than it ever was. It only fouls up the stone age
stuff and that is nothing new. It has been doing that for over 15 years too.

 ml>> how can you read UTF-8 on my CP437 BBS system if you telnet to
 ml>> it??

I have never telnetted inti your BBS system, and I have no intention of ever
doing it. But if I wanted I could configure Putty for CP437. Or any other
encoding scheme.

 MvdV>> BBS users are not part of Fidonet and outside the ASCII only
 MvdV>> world of Northern America, they are an extinct species anyway.
 MvdV>> Very little to foul up.

 ml> then shut the network off and turn out the lights...

Face reality: outside Northern America, Fidonet has become a sysops and points
only network. Has been for almost 20 years. No reason to shut it down for that
reason.

Cheers, Michiel

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