Re: newsletters in text format

Bateau wrote:

>Bier de Stone <art...@att.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Nicolas George wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Bier de Stone  wrote in message
>>><kxASd.259063$w62...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>:
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>    
>>
>>>>OK, the first 128 characters of the unicode standard is the ascii 
>>>>standard AND characters 32 thru 126 are used for this NG. I don't see 
>>>>where you specify that characters 32 thru 126 have got to be fixed 
>>>>width. Isn`t a character a character? Or is that what distinguishes 
>>>>ascii from Western, Unicode-8, and Unicode-16? In other words, ascii not 
>>>>only encompasses particular letters and symbols, it also includes the 
>>>>fonts in which they are displayed.
>>>>   
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I think you need some theory here. 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Linguist provide a list of characters, and the task
>>>of the programmers is to devise a way to encode a sequence of characters
>>>into a sequence of bytes in an unambiguous way. Such a correspondance is
>>>called an encoding.
>>>
>>>ASCII is one of the first efforts to have a standard encoding. At this time,
>>>programmers speak English, and the bytes are reliably 7 bits wide, so the
>>>code chosen use one byte per character...
>>>
>>>Some time later, the standard of 8 bits bytes emerged, and
>>>non-English-speaking had started using computer, so there was a rush for the
>>>128 more bytes values to code various language-specific characters. 
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Well, 8 bits bytes means 256 bytes values, that is not enough for Chinese or
>>>Japanese. Chinese and Japanese programmers invented encodings with several
>>>bytes per character...
>>>
>>>Unicode is an effort to unify everything. First of all, Unicode is not an encoding. I repeat: UNICODE IS NOT AN ENCODING.
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>    
>>
>>>At the time before one descovered a mine of more than sixty thousand old
>>>Chinese ideograms, one thought that 16 bits was enough to code all, so one
>>>used 2-bytes integers to code the Unicode characters. This is UCS-2. Well,
>>>this is UCS-2 big endian or UCS-2 little endian. This is always a problem.
>>>
>>>UTF-16 is a verry bad standard. And as usual with bad standards, it is
>>>heavily supported by a few big companies writing bad software. In this case:
>>>microsoft, Sun (with java), IBM. To avoid upsetting these monsters, the
>>>Unicode consortium has decided never to go beyond the possibilities of
>>>UTF-16.
>>>
>>>There is also UTF-8. It is a bit complicated... but it has a lot of
>>>advantages:
>>>
>>>- it is compatible with ASCII, so it can be handled by 8bit-clean programs;
>>>
>>>- the lexical order of its bytes is the same as the lexical order of the
>>> characters they code;
>>>
>>>- it is corruption-proof: if some bytes are lost or wrong, it is possible to
>>> recover at the next uncorrupted character;
>>>
>>>- it is quite compact for western languages, with not much more than one
>>> byte per character;
>>>
>>>- it has no endianness problem.
>>>
>>>UTF-8 is the Good encoding to use nowadays.
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Monospaced fonts are the historical support
>>>for ASCII-art: people used to do ASCII-art on terminals and line printers a
>>>long time before they were capable of displaying proportional-spaced fonts.
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I found your theory to be interesting and information. You answer 
>>questions effectively without straying far from the methodology that 
>>drives this group. I enjoyed reading the comments from the regulars here 
>>that your expos� helped to inspire.
>>
>>I think if I knew as much about the subject, I wouldn`t change a single 
>>word and solicit my draft to all the syndicated publications in the 
>>area. That's just my point of view on symbolic lettering because my own 
>>interpretation emphasizes the similarities between minuscule/majiscule 
>>characters. In other words, crossing the number 7 when a person 
>>handwrites may appear like a "f" or the mirror appearance of 1s, ls, Is� 
>>Nobody ever thinks to accent their type with strikethru lines for Zs and 
>>7s, which they might do given the opportunity to write it with pen or 
>>pencil. And I`m sure you`ve seen NG users call themselves something like 
>>l<enny and VVolfgang. I understand now. To create crossed sevens and 
>>crossed zs means designing a completely new font because nobody in their 
>>right mind (linguist) is going to do it using the strikethru feature.
>>    
>>
>
>This guy is a major kook.
>  
>

Ja, I`m da von dat isn`t reasonable.

-- 

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