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From: randall@Virginia.EDU (Ran Atkinson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: universality of Latin-1
Message-ID: <1991Apr15.121601.10588@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 15 Apr 91 12:16:01 GMT
References: <1110@sranha.sra.co.jp> <1991Apr10.172756.4991@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <1991Apr12.124741.11555@dg-rtp.dg.com>
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Ran Atkinson originally wrote:
% Fortunately there are a number of possible transport mechanisms out
% there to choose from, some of which are already 8-bit transparent.

In article <1991Apr12.124741.11555@dg-rtp.dg.com> eliot@dg-rtp.dg.com writes:
>Ack!  "Fortunately"?  There is an ancient curse:  "may you live in interesting
>times".  I think it's modern equivalent is "may you have many standards to
>choose from".  

I said what I meant, namely that there are several different transport
MECHANISMS (i.e. sendmail, MMDF, PMDF, etc.) not several different
transport PROTOCOLS.   The whole of the Internet uses the same mail
protocols and that is a good thing, but the availability of different
mechanisms to implement those protocols is also a good thing.  Especially
since some of the mechanisms are already 8-bit transparent, though not
all are.

I would like to see the 8-bit transparency with some kind of character
set definition be added to the protocol more rapidly than Eliot seems
to think likely.