PROPOSAL: alt.ansi-art

In article <tha...@primenet.com>, tha...@primenet.com (Ryan Houle) writes:
>I propose a group for IBM extended ascii and ANSI control character related 
>art.  There have been many requests on alt.ascii-art for extended and ansi 
>art.  If any one would like to discuss this further, my address is 
>tha...@primenet.com

It is not desirable to start a new hierarchy if an existing one can be
used. I suggest something like:
alt.ascii-art.non-standard

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Grobe  gro...@ins.infonet.net

Ryan Houle (tha...@primenet.com) wrote:
: I propose a group for IBM extended ascii and ANSI control character related 
: art.  There have been many requests on alt.ascii-art for extended and ansi 
: art.  If any one would like to discuss this further, my address is 
: tha...@primenet.com


To avoid causing problems at the many global Internet sites all postings 
containing Extended IBM Characters and ANSI characters and ANSI 
Control Codes need to be UUENCODED. Failure to observe this causes 
troubles as the material travels through the Internet routes.  

In effect postings containing these characters become BINARIES.

This is why people go to the trouble of UUencoding & UUdecoding.

This needs to be considered when any new newsgroup is being 
proposed.

The existing newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.ascii could be used but 
of course this groups title makes no mention of ANSI.
Is there a great difference between IBM Extensions of ASCII and ANSI 
when they are used in pictures ?

Bye, 

To avoid causing problems at the many global Internet sites all postings 
containing Extended IBM Characters and ANSI characters and ANSI 
Control Codes need to be UUENCODED. Failure to observe this causes 
troubles as the material travels through the Internet routes.  

In effect postings containing these characters become BINARIES.

This is why people go to the trouble of UUencoding & UUdecoding.

This needs to be considered when any new newsgroup is being 
proposed for ANSI or IBM Extended ASCII.

The existing newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.ascii could be used but 
of course this groups title makes no mention of ANSI.

Is there any great difference between IBM Extensions of ASCII and ANSI 
when they are used in pictures ?

Bye, 

Was my SOY LOAF left out in th'RAIN?  It tastes REAL GOOD!!

>>>>> "Colin_Douthwaite" == Colin Douthwaite <Col...@equinox.gen.nz> writes:

    >> I propose a group for IBM extended ascii and ANSI control
    >> character related art.  There have been many requests on
    >> alt.ascii-art for extended and ansi art.  If any one would like
    >> to discuss this further, my address is tha...@primenet.com
    > To avoid causing problems at the many global Internet sites all
    > postings containing Extended IBM Characters and ANSI characters
    > and ANSI Control Codes need to be UUENCODED. Failure to observe
    > this causes troubles as the material travels through the
    > Internet routes.

I suggest instead we use RFC821 (SMTP) complicance for use with old
mailers that aren't yet 8-bit clean, etc.  This would remove the
ability to send the 8-bit extended characters directly.

However, uuencoding is most valuable when sending information that
only makes sense in files, such as program distributions.  It is
rather unsuitable for normal mail.  I suggest we use MIME, which is a
readily availible standard suitable for the task.  (Technophiles can
get the scoop on MIME specs in RFCs 1521 and 1522.

The use of the MIME encoding means that many mail handlers will DTRT
and send the data as intended.  The Content Transfer Encoding 8-bit
exists for this purpose.

I should point out that although RFC1036 does not mention any MIME
headers, MIME did not come out until after the RFC was written.  I do
not know if the latest news propogation programs handle MIME or not.

If 8-bit turns out to be unsuitable, we can instead use Base64
encoding. 

    > This needs to be considered when any new newsgroup is being
    > proposed.

    > The existing newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.ascii could be used
    > but of course this groups title makes no mention of ANSI.  Is
    > there a great difference between IBM Extensions of ASCII and
    > ANSI when they are used in pictures ?

Yes.  IBM's 8-bit graphics (specified as the IBM 437 font) are single
characters that are simply glyphs for characters.  ANSI is a set of
terminal control codes that move the cursor, change colors, and all
the other things that terminal control codes.  It is essentially the
same as the control code set used by DEC's vt100.  Many mailers will
not propogate the ESC code that prefixes all ANSI codes, and most
explicitly strip the codes for security purposes.

I should point out that IBM's is not the only 8-bit character set.
There are international standards, rapidly becoming more popular in
the Unix world.  This is the set defined by ISO 8859, a character set
designed for international usage.

We may want to make new newsgroups:
alt.binaries.pictures.ascii.8bit.ibm437 and
alt.binaries.pictures.ascii.8bit.iso8859 for the purposes of sharing
these pictures without wreaking havoc on the 7bitters.
--
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	  Joel Ray Holveck, joe...@dali.math.swt.edu, KC5ACN
The fourth law of computing:
  Anything that can go wr
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