Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!samsung!caen!spool.mu.edu!dsinc!syd
From: syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: 8-bit character disply in ELM
Message-ID: <1991Jun6.171136.26330@DSI.COM>
Date: 6 Jun 91 17:11:36 GMT
References: <1991Jun6.161149.13603@infonode.ingr.com>
Reply-To: syd@DSI.COM
Organization: Datacomp Systems, Inc.  Huntingdon Valley, PA
Lines: 26

shelley@b11.ingr.com (Shelley R. Heard) writes:
>I'm new to the group so this may be an age old question.
>Can elm handle 8 bit characters.  Or is it too generic to
>try?  From time to time I send mail with letters such as the
>Spanish ene (n with a ~ over it) and elm substitues the letter
>'q'.  The octal value of ene is 361 and of 'q' is 161.
>Is there a way to make elm send all 8 bits to the terminal?  I
>would olny be sending such mail to machines that have the same
>extended ascii character mappings as mine.
Elm is 8 bit clean, and in 2.4 will even support LOCALE and NLS.
There is one check, in the internal pager for printable characters,
that on systems that sign extend chars may need to be anded with
0xff. (2.4 contains that for all systems).  Note, that not all
external pagers are 8 bit clean either.

The real problem, is that many intervening systems, use 7 bit chars
and strip the 8th bit when they transfer the message.  Elm can do
nothing about the MTAs either on your system, or on intervening systems.

If the path from your system through to the foreign one is 8 bit
clean, Elm should be fine.
-- 
=====================================================================
Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP                   Elm Coordinator
Datacomp Systems, Inc.                          Voice: (215) 947-9900
syd@DSI.COM or dsinc!syd                        FAX:   (215) 938-0235