Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!apollo!rees
From: rees@apollo.uucp (Jim Rees)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: 8-bit fonts
Message-ID: <3aa84fac.b8ab@apollo.uucp>
Date: 4 Mar 88 20:38:00 GMT
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 45

I've been playing around with 8-bit fonts, specifically Latin-1 fonts.
The uucp transport layer is 8-bit transparent, and so is readnews.
If you make one small change to inews, you can use 8-bit fonts too
(assuming your system supports them).  It's kind of neat to read through
news articles and see all the accent marks on French names.

How widespread and how standard is Latin-1 for expression of international
characters?  Someone from Europe want to comment?

Rn apprently strips the high bit somewhere.  I haven't delved into it
yet.  But here's the fix for inews (your line numbers will vary):

% diff -c inews.c.bak inews.c
*** inews.c.bak	Fri Dec 18 06:10:05 1987
--- inews.c	Fri Mar  4 14:03:20 1988
***************
*** 1230,1240 ****
  #endif /* !NFSCLIENT */
  		if (mode != PROC && tty && STRCMP(bfr, ".\n") == 0)
  			break;
  		for (cp = bfr; c = toascii(*cp); cp++) {
! 			if (isprint(c) || isspace(c) || c == '\b')
! 				putc(c, tmpfp);
! 			if (c == '\n')
! 				linecount++;
  		}
  		if (bfr[0] == '>')
  			linserted++;
--- 1230,1245 ----
  #endif /* !NFSCLIENT */
  		if (mode != PROC && tty && STRCMP(bfr, ".\n") == 0)
  			break;
+ #define islatin1(c)	((unsigned)(c)>=0xa0)
  		for (cp = bfr; c = toascii(*cp); cp++) {
! 			if (islatin1(*cp))
! 				putc(*cp, tmpfp);
! 			else {
! 				if (isprint(c) || isspace(c) || c == '\b')
! 					putc(c, tmpfp);
! 				if (c == '\n')
! 					linecount++;
! 			}
  		}
  		if (bfr[0] == '>')
  			linserted++;