FX@nnga.daresbury.ac.UK (Dave Love) (03/22/89)
The problems with uudecode look as though they may have originated
through transfer of files across BITNET. It is a well-known problem
(although I don't know if it's universal) that the characters ^~{} at
least get mangled going through a bitnet route, even if the sender and
receiver are ascii machines. Thus sent ^ can become recieved
~, sent ~ recieved % ... Of course, if this message has passed through
bitnet to you that won't make much sense! The characters that I know
cause trouble are uparrow/caret, tilde and curly brackets. You cannot
undo the transformation automatically since you don't know if % was sent
as such or sent as tilde. Moral -- exchange such files via internet or
uucp. If anyone out there has the clout to persuade the bitnet
authorities to sort this out, please do so. It plays havoc with
resaerchers trying to exchange TeX and PostScript if nothing else.
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ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey) (03/29/89)
In article <22.MAR.1989.14:48:15.FX@UK.AC.DARESBURY.NNGA> FX@nnga.daresbury.ac.UK (Dave Love) writes: >The problems with uudecode look as though they may have originated >through transfer of files across BITNET. It is a well-known problem >(although I don't know if it's universal) that the characters ^~{} at >least get mangled going through a bitnet route, ... > ... > ... If anyone out there has the clout to persuade the bitnet >authorities to sort this out, please do so. It plays havoc with >resaerchers trying to exchange TeX and PostScript if nothing else. Dr. Love is right. A decreasing number of BITNET gateways still have this problem. I think that UKACRL, the official BITNET (a.k.a. EARN) gateway to the UK, is one of them. I imagine that a few well chosen words in the right ear would get the translate table problem solved at your end. That site has been an agravation to me for some time now, but what influence do I, an outsider, have? -- L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo. ljdickey@water.UWaterloo.ca ljdickey@water.BITNET ljdickey@water.UUCP ..!uunet!watmath!water!ljdickey ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (03/30/89)
In article <22.MAR.1989.14:48:15.FX@UK.AC.DARESBURY.NNGA> FX@nnga.daresbury.ac.UK (Dave Love) writes: >The problems with uudecode look as though they may have originated >through transfer of files across BITNET. It is a well-known problem >(although I don't know if it's universal) that the characters ^~{} at >least get mangled going through a bitnet route, even if the sender and >receiver are ascii machines. Thus sent ^ can become recieved > ~, sent ~ recieved % ... Of course, if this message has passed through >bitnet to you that won't make much sense! The characters that I know >cause trouble are uparrow/caret, tilde and curly brackets. You cannot >undo the transformation automatically since you don't know if % was sent >as such or sent as tilde. Moral -- exchange such files via internet or >uucp. If anyone out there has the clout to persuade the bitnet >authorities to sort this out, please do so. It plays havoc with >resaerchers trying to exchange TeX and PostScript if nothing else. It's a nice thought, but will probably never happen. BITNET is wedded to RSCS and EBCDIC, which is probably the major source of the problems right there - until very recently, there was no one-to-one mapping for ASCII/EBCDIC translation. Aside from that, there's no such thing as "standard EBCDIC" - IBM changes the definition with almost every new hardware release. As such, persuading the bitnet authorities is probably a hopeless case. We recently had to change the EBCDIC on our mainframe to comply with the recent ISO definition, (aka IBM CP37, I believe.), which is supposed to now be The Standard EBCDIC. That was, to say the least, a royal pain. Curly brackets, square brackets, tilde, Icelandic Thorn (what the heck is an Icelandic Thorn? I dunno, but your lower case and upper case versions are swapped. Oh. Gee, thanks for letting us know.) and a bunch of other characters got relocated, all in the name of standardization. We are now unable to communicate these characters to other Bitnet hosts because none of them have undergone the painful transition yet... Bitnet is evil. EBCDIC is evil. IBM is evil. Anything built entirely upon and still relying upon punch card technology is utterly evil. -- -=- PrayerMail: Send 100Mbits to holyghost@father.son[127.0.0.1] and You Too can have a Personal Electronic Relationship with God!
ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey) (04/01/89)
In article <608@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) writes: >It's a nice thought, but will probably never happen. BITNET is wedded to >RSCS and EBCDIC, ... I think it will. Our campus has a BLUE BOX machine connecting to most of the other machines on campus and to BITNET. It took some doing, but finally, after twisting the right (no pun intended) elbow, we got translate tables in place that do not mess up the 94 graphic characters of the ISO 646 reference set. (They used to make a royal mess of it.) > Curly brackets, square brackets, > tilde, Icelandic Thorn (what the heck is an Icelandic Thorn? As to the Icelandic Thorn, you might like to know that English used to have a thorn. It looks sort of like a Y, and the sound is something like a "th" as in the word "the". This is the source of the abominable "ye" that one sometimes sees in signs with wording like "Ye olde English candy shop". Those who know, say "The"; those who do not, say "Yee". -- L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo. ljdickey@water.UWaterloo.ca ljdickey@water.BITNET ljdickey@water.UUCP ..!uunet!watmath!water!ljdickey ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu