🚀 go-pugleaf

dhd@exnet.co.uk (Damon) writes:

>So use something like MIME which can cope with a much bigger character
>set than 8-bit and begin to solve the problem for all (human, natural)
>languages.

>IE, don't be parochial and assume that because it solves *your* problem
>it's more then moving from a 1% solution to a 1.1% solution...

Sure!  But the problem is that we could relatively easily move to
ISO-latin-1, (many softwares appear to work with 8 bits chars) so that
it would be a first step to experiment and solve the problems.  Whenever
news solutions are to be found, they must take in consideration the
existence of languages which does not use ISO-latin-1, ie. conversion tools 
should be general enough.

>(An Englishman telling a Frensh person not to be parochial.  B^>)

>And funnily enough, MIME doesn't need 8 bits and the changing of all
>the existing software, does it?  It may be ``simply anachronistic'' to
>be forced to converse in accentless Latin script to communicate
>electronically, but is it *clearly* *simply unreasonable* to make
>*everyone* convert *all* their mailer/news software to solve your
>unique problem when there is a solution which is more general and less
>intrusive.

First, ISO-latin-1 appear to require a minimal conversion of softwares,
as many system work without modifications (this is the case for C-news
with nntp-1.5.11, and newsreaders such as nn, tin, xrn, rn).  Second,
it is only required for people who use such character sets.  I would
not mind using standard ASCII chars to write english... and I am not
able to write japanese at all!  So, the use of ISO-latin-1 in France
would not disturb anybody outside of France, and it contributes to the
solution of the problem - at least it poses it!
--
Gilles BERGER SABBATEL                  Tel: (33) 76 57 46 13
Laboratoire d'appartenance : TIM3
IMAG-LGI/INPG, 46 Avenue Felix Viallet, 38031 GRENOBLE CEDEX - FRANCE