Non-ASC-II [was: Re: Firstmention.com; Texas Proverbs]

[Benjamin Barrett]

Alice Faber wrote:
> Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>
>> I wonder whether the time is now ripe to consider allowing non-ASC-II.
>> I've sent posts in the past including Chinese and Japanese characters
>> and only recently discovered they were baked (BAH keid) or garbled. This
>> is very sad particularly when discussing word origins because knowing
>> the character is critical to actually knowing what the origin is, and
>> now those characters will not be easily recoverable. This is true not
>> only with those languages, but Tsalagi, Arabic, Greek and IPA as well as
>> Spanish as BP notes below.
>>
>> Allowing non-ASC-II will mean some people will miss out on the
>> non-ASC-II characters, but since they get baked with the current
>> situation anyway, doesn't it make sense to upgrade? Are there any
>> downsides or logistical problems to doing so?
>>
>>
>
> The problem is individual email software, not just what the list
> tolerates. For instance, I see some posts with non-ASCII characters, but
> not others. Depending on how the posts reach me, I might see a ?, a
> square, or just *nothing*. The only thing the ADS-L can do, possibly, is
> to transmit the characters and provide an indication of what character
> set is being used.
>
>
Yes! That would be wonderful. Most mailing lists I'm on transmit based
on the sender's specification, but it seems ADS strips everything down
to ASC-II. As I mentioned, people with software not able to read
non-ASC-II would get baked characters, but since they get that anyway,
at least there would be the advantage that people with
Unicode-compatible software would be able to read this critical
information. And there are plenty of free e-mail readers that support
Unicode for people wanting to do so. BB

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