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From: euatdt@euas11g.ericsson.se (Torsten Dahlkvist)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Signature lines
Message-ID: <2146@erix.ericsson.se>
Date: 23 Aug 89 10:43:03 GMT
References: <428.24E71AB9@tlsi.FIDONET.ORG> <1348@abaa.UUCP> <30748@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1989Aug20.025847.3430@twwells.com> <1563@abaa.UUCP>
Sender: news@erix.ericsson.se
Reply-To: euatdt@euas11g.ericsson.se (Torsten Dahlkvist)
Organization: Ellemtel Utvecklings AB, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 48


I suppose I should know better than to get involved in this rather fiery
discussion, but there's one aspect of the .signature file problem which
I haven't seen anybody mention as yet.

A lot of us non-english-native-speakers use terminals adapted to other
languages. For instance, Swedish has three extra letters after z which
cause us a lot of trouble when we use computers for writing regular text
in Swedish. When the proposed 8-bit standards finally settle on WHICH
national-character table to use, we can forget these worries, but so far
we have to try to get along with just 7-bit codes and that means we
replace some of the less-used characters ([\]{|} to be exact) with ours.
Do you begin to see where this is pointing to? Every time I use a
swedish-adapted VT100 to read news, the nice big character graphics of
some of the more frequent posters of this meeting come out rather jumbled.
Every "\" is replaced with an "O" with two dots over it (OE in alternate
German writing). I can assure you this does nothing to improve the looks
of the graphics.

Following the flames thrown at the guy who proposed keeping lines down to
79 characters, I realize that there are many netters who would never
DREAM of letting the limitations of other users affect their practices, but
remember what the guy said: you put the signature there as a message to
other readers. If they can't read it, YOU have failed to get that message
across to them and that is because YOU didn't understand the full
implications of what you were doing.

I only sometimes read news from a VT100. Usually I work on a SUN workstation.
It would be no big problem for me to create incredibly complex graphic
designs which I could hex-code to get through the mailer and add to my
postings, and which would require another SUN to decode into something
readable. I wouldn't do that, though, since it would fail the basic
purpose of usenet communication: to communicate. A high percentage of the
readers wouldn't be able to read them. Kindly keep the same in mind when
you write your messages to the world.

/Torsten

P.S. 4-line .signature without graphic characters but wasting 176 bytes
on a pointless joke follows. _I_ find this a nice compromise which fills
all reasonable needs for clarity while still telling something about my
personality. If you don't like it you are welcome to come here and discuss
the matter in person.

 Torsten Dahlkvist                        ! "I am not now, nor have I ever
 ELLEMTEL Telecommunication Laboratories  !  been, intimately related to
 P.O. Box 1505, S-125 25  ALVSJO, SWEDEN  !  Dweezil Zappa!"              
 Tel: +46 8 727 3788                      !        - "Wierd" Al Yankowitz