Xref: utzoo comp.sources.d:3201 news.groups:6836 news.software.b:1850
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!tektronix!percival!qiclab!leonard
From: leonard@qiclab.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d,news.groups,news.software.b
Subject: Re: comp.datasets Call For Discussion
Message-ID: <1947@qiclab.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jan 89 06:05:29 GMT
References: <1249@fig.bbn.com> <1280@vsi1.UUCP> <151@cjsa.WA.COM> <394@ispi.UUCP> <4@netsys1.netsys.COM> <6201@hoptoad.uucp> <10875@s.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: leonard@qiclab.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Qic Laboratories, Portland, Oregon.
Lines: 36

In article <10875@s.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes:
<Some of us have a dream of making a "WorldNet" .. a world-wide discussion
<system derived from the current Usenet.  While it would be nice to have
<binary files shipped around in binary, there is a reality that we must
<pay attention to.  There are *BACKWARD* operating systems in use out
<there people!  And they don't all use ASCII, and even the ones that use
<ASCII don't all have a way of mixing straight text with binary gunk.
<
<If we want to have this WorldNet thing we've gotta pay attention to
<them folks.  It's mighty unfriendly to snear down our noses at them
<and say they've got an ugly operating system!  There's many ugly things
<about Unix as well and we got no more right to call their system
<ugly as they have to say ours is.

Do note that "worldnet" will *have* to support 8-bit characters! The 
Europeans are getting a bit tired of having their languages shoehorned
into ASCII (*American* Standard Code for Information Interchange).

Once you add 8-bit support, the only problem with binary data would be
line length and indicating end-of-file. Considering how badly things
get munged from time to time, a *byte* count AND a checksum/CRC/???
would be an asset anyway. 

It sooner or later it will be *necessary* to enforce a "thou shalt not
muck up data in transit through thy site". I'd think that this could be
handled by the news-bundling/unbundling software. What you do with it
*locally* is up to you, just so what you pass on matches what you got!

8-bit mail is going to have to happen too, and for the same reasons. 
Get used to ISO-Latin-1 (or whatever they come up with for *the*
standard). 
-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."