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From: ct@dde.uucp (Claus Tondering)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: 8-bit mail
Message-ID: <557@Aragorn.dde.uucp>
Date: 12 May 89 09:04:17 GMT
Organization: Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark
Lines: 17

More and more companies (especially in Europe) are moving from a
7-bit pseudo-ASCII environment to an 8-bit environment (typically
based on the ISO 8859/1 character set). Our company has been using
this 8-bit character set for some years now. But we have problems with
E-mail. Within our organization uucp transfer of E-mail with 8-bit characters
works fine, but if our mail leaves the organization and goes to this
country's backbone machine, the 8th bit is removed from our letters.

The reason, I am told, is that E-mail is based in a set of RFCs that
specify 7-bit ASCII as the character set to use, and therefore characters
with the 8th bit set are stripped. Why must it be so? Uucp has no problems
with 8-bit characters, so why must we restrict ourselves to a standard
that is dying anyway?
-- 
Claus Tondering
Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark
E-mail: ct@dde.dk    or    ...!uunet!mcvax!dkuug!dde!ct