Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!samsung!caen!ox.com!b-tech!zeeff From: zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: New USENET header: Language Message-ID: Date: 28 Dec 90 14:08:54 GMT References: <1990Dec27.191142.22810@fxgrp.fx.com> Organization: Branch Technology Lines: 22 >>Putting the character set in the header limits us to only one language per >>article. I'd much prefer to see some escape mechanism in the body. >>This would allow things like an english posting with a proper xxx >>language name in the signature. >No it doesn't. There are character sets such as ISO 10646 or even to >some extent the ISO 8859-X stanards that support multiple languages. >Adding the header would be easy and it would be relatively easy for an >X based newsreader to change encodings/fonts for different articles. Ok, I should have said "...limits us to one char set per article". So not one language, but fewer languages or at less efficiency. Even ISO 10646 can not support language x and y for any x and y. I don't see that specifying the char set in the header (vs the body) is any easier to implement in a news reader. Allowing switching of the character set within the body is going to be more flexible and efficient than doing it in the header. -- Jon Zeeff (NIC handle JZ) zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us