🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1gdin0INN2rm@agate.berkeley.edu> jbuck@forney.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:
>For any news article that has 8-bit characters in it, include a special
>header indicating the fact.  This header itself will contain eight-bit
>characters, and will be structured in such a way that it is very likely
>to be trashed by a 7-bit link, but that a recognizable residue will
>come through...

Please read RFC-1341, aka MIME.

It defines ways to express the presence of 8-bit characters, and also to
define *which* 8-bit character set you are using (you thought there was
only one, maybe, or that we could all agree on just one?).

It also defines ways to encode such characters so they can be transmitted
through 7-bit links, arriving *intact* rather than trashed.

While 8-bit-clean transmission paths are nice, there is no need to wait
for them or rely on them.  Which is just as well, since it will be many
years before Usenet as a whole will be 8-bit clean, NO MATTER WHAT WE DO.
We can start using 8-bit character sets (note plural) now, and have our
readers show us what was really meant -- or the closest approximation
our terminals can display -- without waiting for 8-bit links, or 8-bit
terminals, or universal agreement on a single 8-bit character set.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry