Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!looking!brad From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: New USENET header: Language Message-ID: <1990Dec31.195124.1249@looking.on.ca> Date: 31 Dec 90 19:51:24 GMT References: <1990Dec29.093002.10739@lth.se> <1990Dec30.205849.1120@faux> <1990Dec31.105011.4815@lth.se> Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 54 You can eliminate the need for a character set header, but you can't eliminate the need for a language header. Well, perhaps with very smart software you could... The language header is for use by readers and propogators. It is to allow people to quietly filter out postings in languages they can't read, or to allow newsfeeds within one country to keep articles in local languages (posted to global groups) within the confines of sites where such languages are used. As for character set, I agree that it's best to define one fairly universal set, and mappings from it to other desired sets. However, this is not all you have to define in a more multimedia system. Right now the only option we have is ASCII plain text. But there are many other forms we might like. For example, "rich text" with imbedded binary information, graphics, font information, etc. is something we might like to use in a message. Certainly we want to extend past the "ASCII with underlining" we have now. Another format is binary -- one that modern news feeders support but which nobody has dared to use as yet. (The readers don't support it well.) Or perhaps we want text+binary, where a message has introductory text, and then a raw binary. Sometimes we may want to identify the binary, if it's an image, for example. The reader can then display it. As far as I can see we only need to define official headers for things that readers, filterers and feeding programs need to know about. Thus whether it's an a.out or .exe neeed not be in our message-type header. Anyway, here's a list of possibles: Plain ASCII with underlining (current default) Universal Character set Rich text -- ASCII Rich text -- Universal character set Andrew style rich text. Postscript Raw Binary Image binary (GIF,TIFF,?,standardize?) If our rich text format is rich enough, we might consider merging all the binary formats into it, except perhaps the raw binary format which is not intended to be interpreted by the reader at all. Otherwise all binary formats should probably include a preface section in one of the text forms, to allow for description beyond what can go in headers.) Text formats with natural language in them should of course have a language header indicating the human language or languages. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473