greyham@hades.ausonics.oz.au (Greyham Stoney) (07/19/90)
Why don't all you people divert your energies into making your news system handle 8 bit news rather than developing new and incompatible ways of bitbashing your files into a format that both news and your unpacking program (be it /bin/sh, sed, awk or whatever) can cope with?. Considering the advantages, (especially to binaries groups), It's gotta be the most worthwhile step to take. It may mean changes at lots of sites, but we gotta start somewhere. [ Insert prediction of immenent death-of-net here should net decide that status-quo is more important than advancing with the times :-) ] Greyham. -- /* Greyham Stoney: Australia: (02) 428 6476 * greyham@hades.ausonics.oz.au - Ausonics Pty Ltd, Lane Cove, Sydney, Oz. * Neurone Server: Brain Cell not Responding. */
tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) (07/20/90)
In article <777@hades.ausonics.oz.au> greyham@hades.ausonics.oz.au (Greyham Stoney) writes: >Why don't all you people divert your energies into making your news system >handle 8 bit news rather than developing new and incompatible ways of >bitbashing your files into a format that both news and your unpacking program >(be it /bin/sh, sed, awk or whatever) can cope with?. 8 bit news would help only slightly with things OTHER than the transmission of binary files via news. Seven bit is basically doing the job now; the remaining issues (envelope consistency, line lengths, character sets, paragraph wrapping etc) aren't going to be solved by going to 8 bits. As for tranmitting binary files, 8 bit alone is insufficient. No binary ought to be transmitted without self contained integrity checking as well as the means to split it up into pieces of acceptable size. Hence some kind of packaging is unavoidable. Given that fact, why not go the small additional distance and have the packaging map into 7 bits. I have never thought, and do not think now, that transmitting binaries is an appropriate activity for Usenet... but a significant minority disagrees, and since they can control who does and doesn't carry the binary bandwidth, it's fine with me. Either way, 8 bit articles don't fix anything fundamentally broken, so I'd concentrate energies elsewhere. >[ Insert prediction of immenent death-of-net here should net decide that > status-quo is more important than advancing with the times :-) ] [ Insert ritual threat to take dollys and go home here. :-) ] -- 1955-1975: 36 Elvis movies. | Tom Neff 1975-1989: nothing. | tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM
jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans) (07/21/90)
In article <777@hades.ausonics.oz.au> greyham@hades.ausonics.oz.au (Greyham Stoney) writes: > Why don't all you people divert your energies into making your news system > handle 8 bit news ... > Considering the advantages, (especially to binaries groups), ... Very short-sighted. Major advantage is to allow information exchange in local languages that require special character sets. And don't tell me that the "language of the news" is English, since that is only true for agreed-upon international newsgroups. Johan -- Johan Vromans jv@mh.nl via internet backbones Multihouse Automatisering bv uucp: ..!{uunet,hp4nl}!mh.nl!jv Doesburgweg 7, 2803 PL Gouda, The Netherlands phone/fax: +31 1820 62911/62500 ------------------------ "Arms are made for hugging" -------------------------
scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons) (07/22/90)
jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes:
:> Why don't all you people divert your energies into making your news system
:> handle 8 bit news ...
:> Considering the advantages, (especially to binaries groups), ...
:Very short-sighted. Major advantage is to allow information exchange
:in local languages that require special character sets.
:And don't tell me that the "language of the news" is English, since
:that is only true for agreed-upon international newsgroups.
The sarcasm lamp is now lit. :-)
So what's your point?
Leave us not forget that 8-bits isn't the answer for all languages,
either. Of course, there aren't many of us reading the current news
who want to read those kanji, katakana, and ghu-only-knows what other
variants. Still, we should all be forced to make software that is
capable of handling it so that the English readers can look at the
Hindi, Korean and Russian postings that flow by.
And I'm sure those guys back at Duke said, "Hey, let's have some
agreed-upon international newsgroups that'll be only in English
and we'll implement to enforce it."
The sarcasm lamp is now off. :-)
Hey, news is ASCII-based, written in english-speaking countries for
english-speaking readers. That fact that it works *at all* for
international and non-English stuff is a wonderful plus. If regional
newgroups have regional needs, they should go ahead and fill them.
But neither side should expect interoperatbility.
My understanding is that a number of nordic installations now have
appropriate hacks to encode/decode/display their national character
sets. That's super; I hope that software propogates its way across
the water. But proper gateways and translations (into 7-bit) will
be needed or the postings are gonna break a lot of systems.diamond@tkou02.enet.dec.com (diamond@tkovoa) (07/23/90)
In article <1990Jul21.174535.8281@lokkur.dexter.mi.us> scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons) writes: >The sarcasm lamp is now lit. :-) Not mine though. (I have a large sarcasm lamp but it's not lit this time.) >Of course, there aren't many of us reading the current news >who want to read those kanji, katakana, and ghu-only-knows what other >variants. There sure are. I can't read them very well, but there are many who do. >Still, we should all be forced to make software that is >capable of handling it so that the English readers can look at the >Hindi, Korean and Russian postings that flow by. You're right; you aren't forced. If you don't, then the rest of the world will leave you behind. But you aren't forced. >The sarcasm lamp is now off. :-) >Hey, news is ASCII-based, written in english-speaking countries for >english-speaking readers. This was true 10 years ago. >That fact that it works *at all* for >international and non-English stuff is a wonderful plus. If regional >newgroups have regional needs, they should go ahead and fill them. >But neither side should expect interoperatbility. They'll go ahead and fill it, believe me. And they will market systems in the U.S. that have interoperability too. Businesses that agree with your opinion will go bankrupt. (And there are a lot of them. The U.S. is moving towards losing the software market, just as it did for cars and home electronics.) -- Norman Diamond, Nihon DEC diamond@tkou02.enet.dec.com This is me speaking. If you want to hear the company speak, you need DECtalk.
ed@braaten.doit.sub.org (Ed Braaten) (07/24/90)
scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons) writes: >Hey, news is ASCII-based, written in english-speaking countries for >english-speaking readers. That fact that it works *at all* for >international and non-English stuff is a wonderful plus. If regional >newgroups have regional needs, they should go ahead and fill them. Thats funny Steve - 50% of the news I read is in German. I'm living in Germany right now. Although many of the 60+ Million Germans here can speak English (often better than we americans ;-), the language in this country is German. And the german language news here is not limited to "regional" consumption. I'm aware of several sites there in the good ole USA that are carrying the german groups also. I'm willing to bet there is a LOT of non-English stuff floating around out there. So why don't we drop the provincial attitudes - lets hear it for 8-bit news! It won't make English any harder to read, but it would certainly make life easier for the rest of the USENET. >But neither side should expect interoperatbility. Say what? Interoperability and the free exchange of information is in my opinion exactly what makes USENET so successful... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ed Braaten | Jesus answered, "I am the way and the Work: ed@imuse.de.intel.com | truth and the life. No one comes to the Home: ed@braaten.doit.sub.org | Father except through me." John 14:6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------