🚀 go-pugleaf

ppan@nobeltech.se (Per Andersson) writes:

> In article <kkZNVB5w165w@blues.kk.sub.org> kosta@blues.kk.sub.org (Kosta Kost
> >Yuk! Allthough I'm sitting in front of an IBM PC clone using
> >IBM Code Page 850, I would never think of bothering the rest 
> >of the world with characters between 128 and 159. That's why
> >I convert between CP850 and ISO 8859-1.
> 
> At least you know that you are using codepage 850. Lots of people are
> not aware that the IBM PC uses several codepages, and fidonet has to my
> knowledge no handling of the different codepages, not to mention other
> charactersets as Latin x ( I think Latin-1 exists as CP819 or something),
> Unicode 1.1 or ISO10646.

All displayable characters in ISO 8859-1 can be converted to IBM Code
Page 850 and then back to ISO 8859-1 without any problem. The characters
are arranged in a different order to maintain backward compatibility with
IBM Code Page 437 (US). In Code Page 850 mainly some graphics characters
have been replaced by Latin 1 characters.

I used to use IBM Code Page 437 for years, because I never had a reason
to switch to IBM Code Page 850. As soon as I discovered IBM Code Page 850
has all the characters found in ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1), I instantly made
the switch. The installation procedure for MS-DOS 5.0 does install
IBM Code Page 850 (in Germany) anyway.  ;-)

>                          Also many people in fidonet, at least in sweden 
> are not interested in interoperability, and could care less about the 
> millions of users reachable on the Internet. Hopefully not all fidonet
> users have this attitude.

I am looking for the authors of fidonet/usenet gateway software to give
them a conversion table so fido articles do generate ISO 8859-1 characters.
I already asked in comp.bbs.waffle (thanks for the hint) - is there any
other suitable place to ask?

After that, we have to find the maintainers of fidonet/usenet gateways. :-)

        Kosta


-- 
  Kosta Kostis, Talstrasse 25, D-6074 Roedermark 3, Germany
  kosta@blues.kk.sub.org                                        (home)
  kostis@frsmic.enet.dec.com                                    (work)
  sw authors: please support ISO 8859-1!        äöüÄÖÜß=aeoeueAEOEUEss