[gopher] Re: Gopherness

[JumpJet Mailbox <jumpjetinfo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Assuming that "Internationlization" is indeed a good thing.  Remember, Morse 
Code is "International", but the character set has NOT been extended to 
accomodate non-US alphabets.  So, why not insist that Gopher TEXT documents 
(Gopher Item Type 0) ONLY be written using ASCII characters.
 
If someone desires to use other characters (including "made up ones"), they can 
type them into a document format that supports the characters (.RTF, .DOC, and 
etceteras), or even a PDF file.  As a last resort, they can even offer the 
document as a picture file (.GIF, .JPG, and etceteras).  Keeping Item Type 0 
"pure" (and I am only talking about Item Type 0) will forever allow 
communication compatability with ALL computers, of any era.
 
It is my understanding that the Only reason for the recent push towards 
"Internationalization" on the Internet is to accomodate "pretty" WEB pages and 
Email messages (so the Browser/Mail software can render a webpage/email, 
billboard-like, on screen in a native language; rather than just offering the 
document as a separate download).  In fact, it has gotten so bad (with "table" 
formatting and all) that very often you can't even print out a web page (or 
even certain emails).

--- On Sun, 8/10/08, Matthew Holevinski <eylusion@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Matthew Holevinski <eylusion@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [gopher] Re: Gopherness
To: gopher@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, August 10, 2008, 5:04 PM

So gopher as it stands needs internationalization?
I'm having trouble following a lot of these emails
but i'm trying =3D-)

Matt

On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Nuno J. Silva <nunojsilva@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrot=
e:
> JumpJet Mailbox <jumpjetinfo@xxxxxxxxx>
> writes:
>
>> --- On Mon, 8/4/08, Nuno J. Silva
>> <nunojsilva@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> "Jay Nemrow" <jnemrow@xxxxxxx> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Kyevan
>>>> <kyevan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What about older clients, though? Modern clients will
probably
>>>>> handle UTF-8 at least well enough to not explode, but
older clients
>>>>> might not.  Generally, it seems safest to stick to the
subset that
>>>>> is ASCII when reasonable, only using UTF-8 or such when
it's
>>>>> actually needed. ... is a perfectly readable replacement
for
>>>>> U+2026, even if it's not "typographically
correct." On the other
>>>>> hand, if you're trying to post a text in, say, a mix
of Arabic, and
>>>>> Klingon, go right ahead and use UTF-8.
>>>
>>> There are also these iso* charsets which just use 8 bit to encode
the
>>> text, not allowing a greater collection of characters, and using
>>> those you wouldn't be able to mix charsets.
> <snip/>
>>> On the other hand, even if the choice was utf8 (so the documents
would
>>> be ASCII or utf8), I'd keep iso* support, just in case
(therefore my
>>> question is 'should we use the same sort of character encoding
when
>>> publishing non-english documents? if yes, which one?' and not
'what
>>> should a client support?').
>>>
>>> What's the actual scenario? Is there any client which crashes
due to
>>> utf8? Which clients are not able to render it correctly? And what
>>> about iso* charsets support?
>>
>> How would we print a Gopher retreived text document on, for example,
>> an older (or mini-mainframe) computer which only uses a Daisy Wheel
>> Printer or Teletype Printer (which ONLY supports ASCII characters)?
>
> If the documents (in any of the mentioned encodings) have non-ASCII
> characters, the behaviour is undefined (e.g., if the machine ignores the
> 8th bit, another characters will be rendered instead of the desired ones)=
.
>
> But there's nothing we can do about that, except writing some script
to
> replace the existing non-ASCII characters with some ASCII description.
>
> Avoiding the use of non-ASCII characters is, of course, a good
> idea. But, if there's some document in a non-western language, or a
> language which requires another alphabet, it's impossible to use ASCII
> in that situation.
>
> <snip/>
>
> --
> Nuno J. Silva (aka njsg)
> LEIC student at Instituto Superior T=E9cnico
> Lisbon, Portugal
> Homepage: http://njsg.no.sapo.pt/
> Gopherspace: gopher://sdf-eu.org/11/users/njsg
> Registered Linux User #402207 - http://counter.li.org
>
> -=3D-=3D-
> Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely
> unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something
> completely new.
>        -- Linus Torvalds
>
>
>
>