Text 6720, 102 rader
Skriven 2013-02-20 14:13:17 av mark lewis (1:3634/12.42)
   Kommentar till text 6694 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: LOL!
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 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

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

my software does perform conversions... that doesn't explain why the incorrect
characters /arrive/ in the PKTs... no tosser software should be performing any
transliterations on any messages passing through it... that means that the
characters leave the originating system as the incorrect characters to start
with...

 ml>  and even worse as two incomprehensible graphical characters

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

provide or point to the transliteration tables to be used going from UTF-8 to
CP437, CP850, Latin-1, etc and i'm sure they will be used... that should put a
halt to all the bickering about character sets, too ;)

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

 MvdV> Because some that convert, convert the wrong things.

then that means that their tables are wrong yet they are the same tables used
by everyone else AFAIK... my understanding is and has been that everyone
software is using the same tables and table format used back when FSC-0054 (and
its predecessor(s)) were developed... i know that GoldEd uses them and i'm
pretty sure that i've used GoldEd's in TimED and TimED's in GoldEd in the
past...

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

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

so you are actually promoting even more segregation and separation by your use
of the phrase "stay on their own turf"?? it sure reads that way...

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

true but it is ugly to say the least and that's what folks are complaining
about... kinda like message dates and time stamps and some seeing them as
unnecessary and cosmetic only... it just ain't right... not by a long shot...
especially when people and systems rely on readable characters (and time
stamps)... this is especially important to our members who have to rely on
other tools to assist them with the message text... those using speech readers
being among the first in line when dealing with these character set issues...
one can only imagine whan björn's name sounds like when a speech reader gets it
with a division symbol instead of an ö or even worse when it arrives with two
unpronouncible characters in UTF-8 encoding...

think about it... "you" (inclusive) sighted folks don't stop to think about
those with vision problems nor to "you" stop to think about those with other
handicaps that lead to problems with their tools when someone decides to change
things up just because...

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

yes and it goes completely against the grain of the network which supported all
kinds of machines... PDP-11, C=64, various mainframes, etc, etc and so on...
some of those machines are being brought back into the network, ya know?

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

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

it sounds like an interesting experiment...

 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...

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

with no users, there is no need for the network is there? if an ISP has no
users, they shutdown... their managers and admins don't keep everything running
for their own usage, do they?

)\/(ark

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 * Origin:  (1:3634/12.42)