Re: A Proposition

> Date:         Fri, 23 Mar 2001 18:14:16 -0600
> From: Andrew D Chaney <adchaney@...>
> Text-based (in this context) refers to not using extended ascii characters*
> and non-standard fonts.**
I think more common usage is to call that ASCII-based. You can make
various MS products send totally unreadable HTML messes in email while
staying firmly inside character positions 32 to 95 of ASCII.

Text-based, for me, is what Unicode calls plain text. No changes in
font size or shape, no colors, no underline, bold or italic, no
tables, no other WYSINWYG tricks, but if it's encoded in something
like UTF8, you can very well have both Roman, Greek, Cyrillic, IPA,
Han Zi, Katakana, Deva Nagari, and hieroglyphs in the same document.

It's more likely for stick-in-the-muds like me to upgrade our Unix
environments to be able to handle the latter than the former. To a
certain extent it will happen behind our backs, since newer versions
of the windowing system do support the necessary large fonts, and the
terminal emulator now does UTF-8 too. So someday we will update our
mutt or pine and find that it displays Unicode email just fine.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)