🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <sckkVB1w165w@blues.kk.sub.org> kosta@blues.kk.sub.org (Kosta Kostis) writes:

>> "Just send 8-bit email" does not work reliably now and never will.

>I've been listening to this "tale" very often...  ;-)
>I still know it not true.   =;^)

Nonsense.  

  I *KNOW* of at least 3 systems (combinations of OS + hardware) that
will flat out crash if offered certain fairly common 8-bit
ISO-8859-like characters.  I'm not going to say which ones in public
because some lurker would go and use this to crash someone else's
machine maliciously.

>This is your view. I've been told things like that in Germany, too
>regarding 8-bit clean news paths, and it was simply untrue. Admins
>have been very cooperative and after only a few months the major
>"toublemakers" were 8-bit clean.

  Some NNTP sites are 8-bit now, many will migrate to 8-bit
eventually, some cannot migrate to 8-bit because of limitations of
OS/hardware or the age of the system.

>Right. I'd prefer not to talk to much but do *implement* 8-bit clean
>paths everywhere. It is much easier than most pessimistic people try
>to make us believe. Still it's a lot of work, though...

  There are TWO issues here.  

  One is to implement wider bit transport which is nice and is useful
but is NOT necessary in a strict sense and is certainly not sufficient
(one still needs to know WHICH 8-bit or 16-bit character set was used
by the author).

  The second is to have a standard for marking the contents of
messages in standard headers using standard syntax and standard
tokens.  If I understand Henry correctly, he is putting together a
draft, based on MIME, that addresses this second issue.

Ran
atkinson@itd.nrl.navy.mil