Subj : UTF-8 and RTL/BTT/column oriented text
To   : All
From : Goran Eriksson
Date : Fri Aug 22 2003 07:48 am

I'm interested in information about current practices among mail/news
clients in the following areas. I'm interested in information both about the
most common practices and any alternative ways of handling these things. Any
direct information as well as pointers to documents to read and
persons/companies/organizatons/institutions to contact will be appreciated.

1. In what order do mail/news clients using UTF-8 encoding of text that
should be displayed right-to-left (RTL) encode the characters on a line? Is
the first character on each line the left-most or the right-most in the
UTF-8 stream for that line?

2. Where is the end-of-line marker put? To the left or to the right of the
UTF-8 stream for that line?

2.  How do mail/news clients using UTF-8 encoding tell the software on the
receiving end that a text should be displayed bottom-to-top (BTT)?

3. In what order do mail/news clients using UTF-8 to encode text that should
be displayed BTT encode the different lines of the text? Is the line that
should be displayed at the bottom of the mail/article at the start or at the
end of the UTF-8 stream?

4. How do mail/news clients UTF-8 encode texts that should be displayed
column-wise? (I understand that such text may come in different variations:
columns displayed RTL or LTR and contents of each column displayed TTB or
BTT.)

5. How do you think things should be done in these respects in FidoNet messages 
containing UTF-8 encoded text?
   
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 * Origin: GET - The Point (2:201/505.1)

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