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From: dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw
Subject: Info: ISPs, AOL, Fonts, Etc.
Date: 1996/06/11
Message-ID: <4pjvaq$99c@voyager.iii.org.tw>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 159626653
organization: Cameo Communications, Inc.
keywords: Fonts, ISPs
newsgroups: alt.ascii-art
originator: dski@
summary: AOL is an ISP; fonts are for the birds


Weible (weible@aol.com) wrote:
> Please do not post ascii art on the newsgroups, unless you designed it
  with a fixed-space font.
 
This is simply good sense. If you don't use a monospaced font, your artwork
will be an incomprehensible mess on most people's screens.
 
> AOL don't use a fixed-space font, but the rest of the internet does.
 
The Internet does not use any font, and I strongly suspect AOL doesn't
either. A capital letter A goes out on the wires as eight signals that
represent the decimal number 65 and mean nothing but a capital letter A to
the receiving system.
 
If someone asks you how to spell "byte," do you reply, "10-point upright
Times Roman b; 10-point upright Times Roman y; 10-point upright Times Roman
t," and so forth?
 
In the past few months I've seen e-mail messages containing a "Face" field
in the header; presumably this specifies a typeface on some systems, but it
is meaningless to most, and each capital A still goes out as decimal 65.
 
Since different systems are equipped with different fonts, the only way to
guarantee that a message will appear in a particular font at the receiving
end is to send the message graphically. This would increase the
transmission time many times over, nobody would be able to search for text
in the message, and many terminals would be unable to display it. This is
simply not done, except by a few clueless Web page designers.
 
The Ladee Vamp (VampLadee@aol.com) wrote --
> I'm well aware of how ISPers feel about AOL members.  Just a thought...
 
Ladee, AOL is your ISP -- your Internet service provider. Everyone on the
Internet has an ISP. Everyone.
 
> This group is for ASCII art which stands for American Standard Code for
  Information Interchange.  So bascally, artwork should be kept to that
  font.  But what font is that?  Courier?  Is that what text programs use
  such as Windows Notepad?
 
ASCII is the set of rules stating that a digital device, when instructed to
produce text, must produce something -- anything -- universally
recognizable as a capital A when fed the binary pattern 01000001, a capital
B when fed 01000010, a capital C when fed 01000011, and so on and so forth.
 
Except for the few that contain that "Face" nonsense, e-mail messages and
Usenet posts are free of font information. Even standard Web pages leave
fonts up to the viewer's browser: standard HTML lets the author specify
only things like "strong," "bold," "italics," "title," "heading,"
"monospaced," etc.
 
Many ISPs provide their customers with graphics-based programs that make
everything coming in over the wire look like typeset material. ALL of the
prettifying is done by the software running on your own computer. 

Brian Odom (bodom@cs.indiana.edu) writes:
> there is *1* internet.  can't you guys on aol just change your font?
 
With all the variety, it's hard to say if there's really only one Internet.
In addition, there are a lot of other protocols besides TCP/IP traveling on
the same wires as the stuff we think of as the Internet.
 
More importantly, note that some people CAN'T change their font -- I've
heard that Pegasus Mail, a widely used mail program, uses only one font, a
proportional font.
 
I can't change mine, either, and I don't want to. Straight 80-column text
display all the way -- none of this graphical nonsense, except for the few
bitmaps I download because the text shows they're worth it. I'm here to
learn and communicate, not to see pretty colors and fancy fonts. I don't
need the flash, I don't want to go blind, and I WILL NOT BE ASSIMILATED.
 
So there.                      Dan Strychalski   dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw