ASCII e-mail vs iso-8859-1

From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke_at_mch20.sbs.de>
Date: Wed Jun 14 14:59:06 2000

> > Doesn't it seem a little strange that people who are interested in
> > computer preservation are sending iso-8859-1 character set messages
> > instead of normal ASCII to a mailing list where others are likely to
> > be using older systems to read their e-mail? Once ASCII goes away,
> > then we've all got problems that would make our older systems very
> > much incompatible with everything else and less useful. Is not plain
> > old ASCII one standard that we should value and do our best to keep
> > from going out of use?

> I agree 100%. Though I must point out that it has nothing at all to
> do with "older" or "newer" systems...it's primarily a "windows" or
> "non-windows" issue.

Well, not exactly - Windows IS NOT using 8859-1 - and I woundn't considere
the usage of 8859 as something to harm classic system users nor users of
non win sytems - in fact, 8859 is only in use among Unix stuff, and 8859
is probably the most 'classic friendly' way of an extended 8-Bit coding
since it leaves the 'high bit set' control codes (80-9F) unasigned. 8859
is eventualy one of the few standards where still people with real knowledge
have been involved and tried to create the least harmfull solution.

And to avoide some misconceptions, RTF, HTML, or whatever fancy formating
has _nothing_ to do with 8859 (the code is not responsible for beeing
used by some other stuff :).

8859-x is todays ASCII.

Gruss
H.

--
VCF Europa 2.0 am 28./29. April 2001 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe
Received on Wed Jun 14 2000 - 14:59:06 BST

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