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Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,alt.sources.d,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Time for 8 bit news, isn't it?????.
Message-ID: <15688@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: 20 Jul 90 06:52:22 GMT
References: <1990Jul13.022224.25441@lth.se> <3119.269d97ea@mccall.com> <777@hades.ausonics.oz.au>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Followup-To: news.software.b
Lines: 30

In article <777@hades.ausonics.oz.au> greyham@hades.ausonics.oz.au (Greyham Stoney) writes:
>Why don't all you people divert your energies into making your news system
>handle 8 bit news rather than developing new and incompatible ways of
>bitbashing your files into a format that both news and your unpacking program
>(be it /bin/sh, sed, awk or whatever) can cope with?.

8 bit news would help only slightly with things OTHER than the transmission
of binary files via news.   Seven bit is basically doing the job now;
the remaining issues (envelope consistency, line lengths, character sets,
paragraph wrapping etc) aren't going to be solved by going to 8 bits.

As for tranmitting binary files, 8 bit alone is insufficient.  No binary
ought to be transmitted without self contained integrity checking as
well as the means to split it up into pieces of acceptable size.  Hence
some kind of packaging is unavoidable.  Given that fact, why not go the
small additional distance and have the packaging map into 7 bits.

I have never thought, and do not think now, that transmitting binaries
is an appropriate activity for Usenet... but a significant minority
disagrees, and since they can control who does and doesn't carry the
binary bandwidth, it's fine with me.  Either way, 8 bit articles don't
fix anything fundamentally broken, so I'd concentrate energies elsewhere.

>[ Insert prediction of immenent death-of-net here should net decide that
>  status-quo is more important than advancing with the times :-) ]

[ Insert ritual threat to take dollys and go home here. :-) ]
-- 
 1955-1975: 36 Elvis movies.  |  Tom Neff
 1975-1989: nothing.          |  tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM