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From: ag414@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech)
Subject: Re: WARNING: Control Codes
Date: 1996/05/29
Message-ID: <4oimtv$dr9@freenet-news.carleton.ca>#1/1
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sender: ag414@freenet6.carleton.ca (Colin R. Leech)
references: <4nsr4p$qs4@orm.southern.co.nz> <4of8lv$g36@tofu.alt.net>
organization: The National Capital FreeNet
reply-to: ag414@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech)
newsgroups: alt.ascii-art,alt.ascii-art.animation



Roscinante (rosc@fbn.globalent.net) writes:
> cfbd@southern.co.nz (Colin Douthwaite) writes:
>>It can cause an awful lot of trouble on Net systems worldwide.
> 
>   Isn't that a deficiency in the -receiving- ends software?  I mean 
> really, if they can't handle plain old ansi codes, they're running a 
> dinosaur, eh?  

No. What you have to remember is that there are hundreds of different
types of computers hooked up to the Internet. Some are PCs (DOS, Windows,
OS2), some Macintoshes, many many Unix boxes, VMS, VM/CMS, Honeywell, HP -
any type of computer or operating system you can think of, there's
probably somebody out there connected to it. Each operating system
interprets the control codes a little differently. Just take the problems
with French accents (the ISO standards, the DOS code pages, etc.) and the
incompatibilities, and multiply that a thousandfold. Heck, the IBM
mainframes use EBCDIC, not ASCII, so a conversion table is necessary to
hook them up to everybody else.

ASCII is the lowest common denominator that everybody understands. Once
you get into the control codes, the possible interpretations multiply,
creaitng a nightmare of (non-)standards.

--
#####    |\^/|     Colin R. Leech     ag414 or crleech@freenet.carleton.ca
##### _|\|   |/|_  Civil engineer by training, transport planner by choice.
##### >         <  Opinions are my own. Consider them shareware if you want.
#####  >_./|\._<   "If you can't return a favour, pass it on." - A.L. Brown