🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Apr10.172756.4991@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, randall@Virginia.EDU (Randall Atkinson) writes:
|> In article <1110@sranha.sra.co.jp>, 
|> 	Erik M. van der Poel <erik@srava.sra.co.jp> responded:
|> >Have you ever tried to send yourself a message in Latin-1? Did it
|> >work? And even if *you* have a reasonable version of sendmail (one
|> >that doesn't strip the 8th bit), what makes you so certain that
|> >Torbj|rn's message and anyone else's won't pass through a site that
|> >*does* strip the 8th bit?
|> It does work for a fair and ever increasing subset of the Internet.
|> BITNET doesn't do very well with it.  Clearly we need to move towards
|> 8-bit and 16-bit and 32-bit transparent mail transport mechanisms.

I expected to see someone else post a more authoritative answer, but since
none has been forthcoming, I will venture.  The folks who work on such things
have been considering the 8-bit, different-codeset issues, as part of a much
larger picture of including such things as graphics and other binary
information in mail.  Since those are harder problems, it means that they
won't have solutions all that quickly.  There is a mailing list on this
subject; if you really need it I can probaly dig out a lead on how to get
onto that mailing list.

|> Fortunately there are a number of possible transport mechanisms out
|> there to choose from, some of which are already 8-bit transparent.
Ack!  "Fortunately"?  There is an ancient curse:  "may you live in interesting
times".  I think it's modern equivalent is "may you have many standards to
choose from".  

-- 
Topher Eliot                           Data General DG/UX Internationalization
(919) 248-6371        62 T. W. Alexander Dr., Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
eliot@dg-rtp.dg.com                           {backbone}!mcnc!rti!dg-rtp!eliot
Obviously, I speak for myself, not for DG.