Subj : The seven-bit restriction
To   : Bj”rn Felten
From : Michiel van der Vlist
Date : Fri Jul 27 2018 01:25:02

Hello Bj”rn,

On Monday February 03 2014 17:24, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>> Allow8bit 1

 BF>    I know. But I don't understand why we even need this.

Because the Fidonet community as a whole isn't ready for it yet. Fortunately 
those working on the MakeNlNg project were. So be glad that at least it has 
been made possible.

Some call this process diplomacy. Go in small steps.  Don't try to break down 
the wall in one day. That won't work. First make a door but do not open it yet. 
Then make a peep hole to raise the other side's curiosity. Then give them a key 
so they can open the door. Small steps...

 BF> As I said, I completely disabled (made a conditional zero jump) that
 BF> check in my 1999 patch.

Eh.. if you completely disabled it, would that not be an UNconritional jump?

 BF> Who would even want to *not* allow it?

Is that a rethorical question?

 MvdV>> There is just one little problem. Just as the ASCII only
 MvdV>> restriction is not fair to the world outside the part where the
 MvdV>> native US English speakers live, it would not be fair to
 MvdV>> restrict it to those that can spell their name or city properly
 MvdV>> in CP437, CP850 or LATIN-1.

 BF>    Who cares?

I for one.

 BF>    The nodelist is nothing but a database that is supposed to be read
 BF> and interpreted by programs. Not to be read by low-ASCII brainwashed
 BF> persons.

So why don't we completely do away with the fields for the system name, the 
sysop name and the location. They serve no purpose whatsoever in regarding 
mailers making a connection.

 MvdV>> I we allow more than ASCII, we should allow ALL Fidonet
 MvdV>> participants to have their name properly spelled. Unfortunately
 MvdV>> there is no single 8 bit character set that can fulfil this
 MvdV>> requirement, and having a different character encoding scheme
 MvdV>> for each line is ehh.. unpractical.

 BF>    Nah, lets do it!

Let us do what?

 BF> Nobody think that the nodelist will grow bigger any more. So what if
 BF> it suddenly becomes twice the size (as with every character 16-bit).
 BF> Not that it will ever happen, but still, so what?

Indeed so what?

So I suggest you make the next step. Instead of using an 8 bit character set to 
encode the ” for your name in the nodelist, encode it in UTF-8. This will show 
as TWO question marks in the Z2 nodelist.

Cheers, Michiel

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