Xref: utzoo comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:1778 news.admin:4595
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lll-winken!ames!amdahl!pacbell!noe!eps
From: eps@noe.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d,news.admin
Subject: Re: Perils of IBM/Bitnet and other communications channels
Summary: BITNET is bad for you
Keywords: tilde caret vertical bars
Message-ID: <579@noe.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jan 89 22:28:14 GMT
References: <2686@looking.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@noe.UUCP
Reply-To: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Followup-To: news.admin
Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco
Lines: 20

In article <2686@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>I am told that sometimes travelling through IBM machines (bitnet etc.)
>maps tilde ~ to ^.  Are there any other perils like this I should be
>wary of, before release?  Is the tilde problem real or isolated?

I ran into this about 2 months ago.  The tilde problem is real
and becoming increasingly widespread (gateways that didn't have
the problem two weeks ago do now).

Others: ^ (caret) can become a square bracket or a blank space.
| (vertical bar) can become a colon.  DEL becomes lowercase "k"
(I know better, but thought I'd try it anyway).  

Several people mentioned that EBCDIC has two different vertical
bar characters (4F=solid; 6A=broken).

KLEINSIN@INFOODS.MIT.EDU suggested I look into ISO8859@JHUVM.BITNET
(via LISTSERV) for discussions on code conversion problems.

					-=EPS=-