Text 233, 60 rader
Skriven 2005-04-29 10:43:00 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
    Kommentar till text 219 av Aleksej R. Serdyukov (2:5020/24000)
Ärende: Changing FTS-0001.
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Hello Aleksej,

MvdV>> You know Carol, that is one of the reasons I am sceptical when claims
MvdV>> are made about Fidonet nodes in China. FidoNet is based on 8
MvdV>> (actually just 7) bit character text only.

 >       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 > Most of the current Fidonet uses Cyrillic, so it can't be 7 bit...

Certainly, the vast majority of FidoNet users /today/ uses an 8 bit character
set. No use trying to deny that.

what I meant was that at the time FidoNet was designed, no consideration
whatsoever was given to character sets other than the 7 seven bit ASCII set.
The soft return is a heritage from word star, the popular editor from before
the PC era.

It wasn't until FidoNet had firmly set foot in Europe and European programmers
got involved, that consideration was given to extended character sets. Most
European implementations would allow the full use of 8 bit characters, except
for 0x8D, but it was with great reluctance that moderators would allow the use
of so called "high ASCII". A misnomer BTW, but that is beside the point.

And you know what, in the beginning this reluctance was justified. Try to
display 8 bit characters on a VT100 and see what happens. Some of these
characters with bit 8 up are interpreted as control characters that do funny
things with the first generation CRT displays. It was only when the use of
stand alone terminals died out that "high ASCII" stopped being a problem.

A problem in the sense that it did not do harmful things. The problem that
FidoNet never defined a default 8 bit character set remains till today.

MvdV>> But... there is still no way that I can use German and
MvdV>> Cyrillic in the same text. If I use codepage 866, I have to
MvdV>> forgo of the umlauts. And vice versa.

 > You could edit CP866 to have some 12 more characters that are
 > not usually used. <G>

Twelve characters isn't enough and besides: who am I as a non native Russian to
decide which Cyrillic characters are "not ususally used"? I think the
initiative to define such a code page for mixed Cyrillic/European use will have
to come from those who will use it most....

MvdV>> But I doubt if I will see the day that all of FidoNet goes UTF8...

 > Yeah, even though Windows did go Unicode, software didn't...

Outlook Express does unicode....

 > Hej hej! They have blue screens of death and they never notice
 > anyway...

Actually I have never seen this blue screen of death. I have Windows seen lock
up on me, but never with just a blue screen...

Cheers, Michiel

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