From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/53731 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Oliver Scholz Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Gnus: UTF-8 and compatibility with other MUAs Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:48:11 +0200 Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1061027445 7810 80.91.224.253 (16 Aug 2003 09:50:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 09:50:45 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M2275@lists.math.uh.edu Sat Aug 16 11:50:44 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nxhr-00054d-00 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:50:44 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19nxg9-0003qA-00; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 04:48:57 -0500 Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com ([64.157.176.121]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19nxfy-0003q2-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 04:48:46 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 44538 invoked by alias); 16 Aug 2003 09:48:45 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 44533 invoked from network); 16 Aug 2003 09:48:45 -0000 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org (80.91.224.249) by sclp3.sclp.com with SMTP; 16 Aug 2003 09:48:45 -0000 Original-Received: from list by main.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nxh2-0007yZ-00 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:49:52 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Received: from sea.gmane.org ([80.91.224.252]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nxh1-0007yR-00 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:49:51 +0200 Original-Received: from news by sea.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19nxfu-000201-00 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 2003 11:48:42 +0200 Original-Lines: 60 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Attribution: os X-Face: "HgH2sgK|bfH$;PiOJI6|qUCf.ve<51_Od(%ynHr?=>znn#~#oS>",F%B8&\vus),2AsPYb -n>PgddtGEn}s7kH?7kH{P_~vu?]OvVN^qD(L)>G^gDCl(U9n{:d>'DkilN!_K"eNzjrtI4Ya6;Td% IZGMbJ{lawG+'J>QXPZD&TwWU@^~A}f^zAb[Ru;CT(UA]c& User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) Emacs/21.3.50 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:PlYFiXuM+Iri+7s57XTBep94bnw= Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:53731 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:53731 Jesper Harder writes: > Oliver Scholz writes: > >> Well, I think, if you want to maximize the chance that your message >> is flawlessly readable at the other end > > That _is_ the raison d'être for MIME after all. Yes, but I think we'd both agree that the chance is rather small, if I started to use the MIME compliant coding system ISO 2022 in western Europe. IMO Unicode offers the chance to escape the current tower-of-babel situation as far as character encodings are concerned. I'd like to compare the current state of affairs with western Europe in pre-Latin-1 time. I'd like to put it this way: If you are satisfied with a _fair_ chance to be flawlessly readable at the other end, you may use UTF-8. If you want to _maximize_ the chance that you are flawlessly readable at the other end, but don't want to sacrifice important national characters, you should follow the rules which Simon pointed out. If you want to be _sure_ that you are flawlessly readable at the other end, you should use US-ASCII. In Germany there are at least two conventions to express umlauts in plain ASCII. I'd guess that similar conventions exist for other languages. How long it will take for Unicode to become as widespread in western Europe as Latin-1 is now -- I don't know. But so far it has spread very rapidly. [...] >> BTW, if the rule were that we should use the smallest, most widely >> used coded character set which covers the all necessary characters in >> a message, then western European users should use neither Latin-1 nor >> Latin-9, but windows-1252. > > No, because Windows-1252 isn't a standard, i.e. endorsed by IETF, ISO > or another reputable standards body. (IANA registration doesn't make > it a standard -- anyone can in principle register any old homebrewed > charset with IANA). [Aside: Hmm, maybe it could be funny to register emacs-mule ...] I also prefer standards developed by official standards bodies, especially such like ISO, CEN (Europe) and DIN (Germany), because they are at least indirectly under democratic control. However, there are also things that are de facto standards, because of their widespread use. Windows-1252, Postscript and the English language, for example. I am pretty sure that there are more people around whose MUAs/NUAs can deal with windows-1252 than with Latin-9. Oliver -- 29 Thermidor an 211 de la Révolution Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!