Re: [OT] message formats (was: browser footprint)

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:53:27 -0400 krishna e bera <keb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>Supporting only ASCII (which essentially means English-only) in this day 
>and age is a form of cultural imperialism.  Tor needs users in every country, 

     Bullshit.

>in every language, to be fully effective and available.

     Fine.  Start as many lists as you would like, each dedicated to a
language and character set of your choice.

>So even if we speak only English on this listserv, it would seem inappropiate 

     My point exactly.  Postings to this list are written in English, as
a rule, though there may have been a case or two where someone posted
something *in ASCII text*, who then got assistance off the list (i.e.,
by private email) by another subscriber who knew the language of the person
needing assistance.  If you want communication to be widespread, then you
should simplify the method of communication to the greatest common factor,
which is ASCII, not EBCDIC, not HTML, not unicode.

>to fault people for using standards-compliant unicode-capable mailers,
>or ask them to override default behaviour of their software to support 
>apps on legacy proprietary operating systems.

     Sort of like what you want me to do, right?
>
>Source code is available for other mail packages for Solaris,
>as well as packages like GNU recode.

     I repeat:  I am not the administrator of this system.  Period.

>If you choose not to use one, then in the rare case someone posts
>a base64-encoded message on a subject of interest, you could 
>ask someone to send you the trancoded message.

     If someone posts a block of ASCII digits, as happened in the case
that prompted all of this discussion, I'm really not interested in
pursuing it further.  If the original poster wanted it to be legible
enough to be of potential interest to the widest audience on this list,
then the original poster would have sent it as ASCII text.  As it was,
it really looked like some massmailer had managed to hit the list and,
with a little luck, the list owner would attempt to block it in the
future.  Even the Subject: header contained junk, a common massmail
property.
     Now please stop.  This is off-topic and should be unnecessary to
explain in the first place, just as the reasons for not top-posting
should be obvious.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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