Text 6902, 84 rader
Skriven 2013-12-09 20:28:42 av mark lewis (1:3634/12.71)
   Kommentar till text 6897 av Nicholas Boel (1:154/701)
Ärende: UTF-8
=============
On Mon, 09 Dec 2013, Nicholas Boel wrote to Michiel van der Vlist:

 MV> Do you think it is fair that I can write my name exactly as it is
 MV> written in my own language and that you can not?

 NB> I think everyone should be able to write their names exactly how
 NB> they are spelled. I'm not sure as to why this is such a huge
 NB> argument on Fidonet, but UTF-8, Latin-1 (8859-1), koi8-r, and every
 NB> other widely used charset out there should have been dealt with
 NB> when Fidonet became an international network.

that was back in the '80s and early '90s... UTF8 was just getting started
around '92 and didn't get really going until Jan '93 when it was first
presented at the USENIX conference... it wasn't until 2008 when utf-8 was
recognised as the most common encoding for html files...

 NB> The rules of English speaking only echos can still hold their 
 NB> weight, but no charset or codepage has ever been deemed the *only* 
 NB> one you are allowed to use. 

because the developers at the time saw the need for being able to translate
into other character sets to enable others to communicate easier...
unfortunately they weren't as successful as they could have been and they left
fidonet for various reasons before they could complete their tasks with their
software... many left in disgust due to others actions and posts which we still
see a lot of similar type stuff today... some few remain but they don't release
their code or talk about their work because of the way others talk to and about
them...

 NB> It has been said in the past, people that don't care to upgrade or
 NB> re-configure their software to this day and age will see garbage on
 NB> their screens. So what? It doesn't break anything on their end,
 NB> except their visual experience.

and that's over half of the reason to participate in the network... if everyone
i converse with were to switch to using utf-8 and non-ASCII characters, i would
probably leave, too... unless i was able to develop something that fit my
needs... whether i do that or not remains to be seen but i do have several megs
of code that i have written which is sitting idle and has been for years...
some i used to use during development with an eye to releasing it for others to
use but the abuse took that idea away and lead to a quite angry and abusive
life due to others actions...

 NB> That is not the fault of people wanting to keep their software in 
 NB> the current century in regards to international keymaps, charsets, 
 NB> and codepages. *shrug*

the problem is that even though you may be able to properly see eg: cryllic or
greek or chinese glyphs, it doesn't really help you read and participate in the
conversation... at best you might be able to paste it into a translator and get
something that might or might not make sense in english...

anecdote: i had to really laugh earlier at another's utf-8 postings where their
russian version offered several variations of 'protein' first and finally
offered 'squirrel' as an option... really?

  "i have protein in my pants"
OR
  "i have a squirrel in my pants"

:LOLOLOL:

at least that was better than that translator that rhymes with 'thing' ;)

 NB> If I could ever get GoldEd to display Cyrillic, Greek, and whatever
 NB> else it doesn't show properly, I may some day be interested in
 NB> carrying some Russian echos here, while maybe even trying to learn
 NB> to read it. I'm glad there's still currently maintained software
 NB> out there in regards to BBSs and FTN related stuff. Advancement in
 NB> the software is what keeps me interested in this hobby! 

agreed to a point... did you know that what many folk consider to be "modern"
software (ie: internet apps) really use '60s tech for their transmissions? eg:
attaching a binary to an email... the binary is translated into plain ascii and
gains generally 1/3rd the size it would be without the translation (MIME, UUE,
XXE) ;)

)\/(ark

Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can
think. - Werner Heisenberg

--- FMail/Win32 1.60
 * Origin:  (1:3634/12.71)