Text 20480, 63 rader
Skriven 2011-07-06 11:53:58 av Gary Perkins (4176.fido_news)
  Kommentar till text 20477 av Björn Felten (2:203/2)
Ärende: character sets
======================
  Re: character sets
  By: Bj.rn Felten to Gary Perkins on Wed Jul 06 2011 01:06 pm

 >     If that is so, it's because some stubborn developers (probably residing
 > in countries that are quite satisfied with the basic 26 character set)
 > refuse to read up on the FTN proposals -- such as e.g. FSC-50 and FSC-51
 > that are now more than 20 years old.

As I mentioned previously, I'm pretty sure the developers are simply too busy
to deal with something that is more cosmetic than functional.  No one's getting
paid to do this stuff anymore.

 >  GP> Fidonet was not designed for that, and should not become that.
 >
 >    Maybe it wasn't originally, but soon enough developers from the rest of
 > the world kept up and made their contributions (the two I cited above
 > happens to come from Sweden, BTW :) ) so, since about 20 odd years back, it
 > *is* .

I'm not trying to argue with you, I personally believe it would be nice if
everyone's systems and editors behaved the same; on the other hand, you say
those are proposals, were they ever officially adopted?

 >  GP> Over time, more and more systems and software will become Unicode
 >  GP> aware.
 >
 >    We don't really need that. All we need to do is get rid of the few
 > remaining FTN systems that cannot handle the char set kludges properly. And
 > I bet you can count those systems on one hand while holding a pen with your
 > thumb and one finger.

I've no idea.  They'll disappear in time.  I've talked with a few sysops
running their systems on OS/2.  OS/2 won't even operate on modern hardware (at
least not on mine), so most of the few OS/2 systems left out there will either
upgrade at some point, or disappear.

 >  GP> It's not a process that can be pushed.
 >
 >    LOL! As I said above, the FTN standards has been available for 20 odd
 > years for everyone to see. How's that for being pushed...? :)

A proposal is not a standard.  Once a proposal has been adopted it's no longer
a proposal, it IS a standard.

I never dealt much with codepages on MSDOS.  In the 90s, a majority of bulletin
boards, of course, ran on DOS.  No one had heard of Unicode in the United
States (not once had I heard of it until the mid 2000s).  I'm not even sure DOS
was capable of a 16bit codepage.  To be interoperable, the BBSes had to all
agree on character translation, and everyone's systems were shipped with cp437,
so that's what was used.  Just like another couple countries shipped with
cp850, and others used other codepages.  It was a standard that was developed
before anyone ever thought so many computers would be connecting to each other
across many countries.  No one, not even in Sweden, could see what was coming.

Even once a sysop configures his/her system to match character translations
with Fidonet, users may dial in using 437.

Anyhow, it's something that's always going to occur.  The older software's not
going to disappear.  I'm tired of the debate already, so that's my last two
cents. :)

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