Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!maytag!watmath!tmatimar
From: tmatimar@watmath.waterloo.edu (Ted M A Timar)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Time for 8 bit news, isn't it?????.
Message-ID: <1990Jul29.171112.4093@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 29 Jul 90 17:11:12 GMT
References: <1990Jul13.022224.25441@lth.se> <3119.269d97ea@mccall.com> <777@hades.ausonics.oz.au> <15688@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <+7Y$AV&@rpi.edu> <1990Jul21.091529.29557@lth.se> <1857@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <37713@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 47

In article <37713@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:
>Many sites will continue to run the software they are using now, and no amount
>of cajoling will cause them to install new, 8-bit compatible software.  In
>some cases, this is because the organization gives news and mail a low priority
>(doesn't bring in money, etc).  Many sites are still running obsolete software
>and will continue to do so.  To install new software people need an incentive.
>There is a very small incentive, unfortunately, for sites in English-speaking
>countries to install software to support 8-bit character sets.

I don't see why we spend so much time catering to people who are unwilling
to upgrade their software to more recent versions.  I think, to be reasonable,
we must maintain backward compatibility to the version immediately before the
current one, and possibly a bit more, so that people with different transport
agents (not bnews/cnews, or PC's running news ...) to catch up.

To be fair, the problem is, in part, that news installation is not trivial,
and making it trivial isn't trivial.  This discourages sites with many other
problems from upgrading when they have other problems to deal with.  But
they do slow down progress much more than we might desire.

>This means that any new software must co-exist with the current environment.
>One way to do this is to have gateway sites do conversion.  There are
>relatively
>few connections between the US and Europe -- most traffic across the Atlantic
>goes through uunet.  Character translation could be done on the uunet-mcsun
>link -- stripping accents on articles arriving from Europe, remapping
>characters
>so when an American types braces in articles in comp.lang.c, readers in
>Europe see braces, instead of language-specific characters.

Unfortunately, there are many gateway sites to Europe.  There are also
many gateway sites to Quebec.  (Both Europe and Quebec can use NNTP to
get news from almost anywhere now.)

I would like to see a Usenet II / Usenet with very few gateways.  No new
software would be written for Usenet, and all news would be gatewayed
both ways.  Those gatewayed in would, in many cases be entirely
gibberish.  This would encourage sites to upgrade as soon as possible.

Furthermore, I would recommend that a "Language:" header be added to
all articles.  And a reverse KILL format to the newsreaders, so that
people could kill all but the languages they could read.

-- 
Just my .0002 cents worth
Ted Timar
tmatimar@watmath.waterloo.edu