From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/53750 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: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 19:24:19 +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 1061141405 31713 80.91.224.253 (17 Aug 2003 17:30:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:30:05 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M2291@lists.math.uh.edu Sun Aug 17 19:30:04 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 19oRLw-0006Rw-00 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 19:30:04 +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 19oRKx-0008GC-00; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:29:03 -0500 Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com ([64.157.176.121]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19oRKt-0008G7-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:28:59 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 15151 invoked by alias); 17 Aug 2003 17:28:59 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 15146 invoked from network); 17 Aug 2003 17:28:58 -0000 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org (80.91.224.249) by sclp3.sclp.com with SMTP; 17 Aug 2003 17:28:58 -0000 Original-Received: from root by main.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19oRLw-0004Cc-00 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 19:30:04 +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 19oRJC-0004B7-00 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 19:27:14 +0200 Original-Received: from news by sea.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19oRI7-0008Bi-00 for ; Sun, 17 Aug 2003 19:26:07 +0200 Original-Lines: 50 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:/uqtM2vFiPYLaJMNLVBU9je78es= Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:53750 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:53750 Jesper Harder writes: [...] > It would be foolish not to use Unicode for any _new_ protocols or > formats. But for legacy systems like email and Usenet backward > compatibility is really, really important. If you look at how > e.g. MIME or format=flowed was designed, you'll see that a lot of > effort and thought was spent on minimizing negative effects for > existing clients. > > You need an especially good excuse to break existing stuff. The fact > that Unicode is a technically more pleasing solution just isn't a good > enough reason to break things unnecessarily, IMHO. [...] I have to admit that this is a very strong argument. It could probably convince me, if the situation in Usenet were not already such a mess. I agree that it is sometimes a good thing to preserve a current working state in order to maximize compatibility. But sometimes it is a good thing to dare a reform. Which is the case for Usenet is probably a matter of estimation. I think I have stated most of my arguments. At least I shouldn't smile upon people anymore who use plain ASCII in the de.* hierarchy. One could probably rather convince me to use ASCII than to use, say, Latin-9. > > My guess -- by the way -- is that Unicode will become increasingly > > important in Europe, especially for the members of the EU. We'd need > > at least Latin-1/Latin-9, Latin-2 and Greek (ISO 8859-7). And I am not > > sure if that already covers Latvian, Romanian and others. There will > > be a growing need for an encoding that covers all of these languages. > I think most Western European users don't care about and don't know > how to access any glyph that isn't printed on the keyboard. My guess is that the usage of UTF-8 in Europe will start in business e-eail and spread from there. But maybe this is not my actual point. It's rather that I want it to be easy to mix different languages freely. Why shouldn't a Pole or a Chinese posting a German message to the de.* hierarchy sign with his or her Chinese of Polish name? Why not a Greek verse in the signature? Or an Arabian proverb? Many people would't do it, unless they can be sure that it wouldn't garble their umlauts for some people, however small or great their number may be. This is decent, but I also find it suboptimal. It won't change, until UTF-8 becomes the default. Oliver -- 30 Thermidor an 211 de la Révolution Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!