Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!bagate!cbmvax!atha!aupair.cs.athabascau.ca!lyndon
From: lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: New USENET header: Language
Message-ID: <537@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca>
Date: 24 Dec 90 18:28:42 GMT
References: <1990Dec22.081718.2109@looking.on.ca> <4ec122f7.1bc5b@pisa.ifs.umich.edu> <1990Dec22.231146.17316@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 22


>  The other half of this is fixing the reading and posting
>  programs.  For example, xrn could be fixed so that if it sees
>  "Language: Japanese" in the header, it switches to a text widget
>  that can display Japanese text.  This would require agreement on
>  which of the Japanese text encoding schemes to use (EUC, JIS,
>  etc.) but this shouldn't be hard if we discuss it here and just
>  pick one.

The concepts of language and character set are completely distinct.
It's quite possible to build a one to many (or many to many) mapping
of languages into character sets. The proposed Language: header should
be used for its originally intended purpose: to indicate what language(s)
the author used in the posting. The issue of selecting character sets
and encodings should be addressed seperately, and not inferred from the
Language: header.

-- 
    Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
        {alberta,cbmvax,mips}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca
                    Packet: ve6bbm@ve6mc [.ab.can.na]
      The only thing open about OSF is their mouth.  --Chuck Musciano