[OT] A challenge to the ASCII proponents.

Robin Munn rmunn at pobox.com
Fri Jul 18 14:35:26 EDT 2003


(Restoring the [OT] marker in the subject because this is definitely
off-topic for a Python newsgroup. Well, I guess it might have a bearing
on Python's use of Unicode. Somehow. Remotely.)

Martin v. Loewis <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Alan Kennedy wrote:
>> For anybody who has MS Internet Explorer 5+, Netscape 6+, Mozilla 1+,
>> i.e. any browser that supports XML, simply save this to a disk file
>> and open it in your chosen browser.
> [...]
> 
>> So, the challenge to the ASCII proponents is: put the greek word
>> "gignooskoo" on everybody's screen, originating from a usenet message,
>> in the original greek, where "oo" -> greek letter omega.
> [...]
>> I expect you won't find it as simple as the XML above, although I'm
>> also completely prepared to be proven wrong (Alan tries to cover his
>> a** in advance ;-).
> 
> So what do you think about this message?:
> 
> ????????

I see eight identical question marks.

> 
> Look Ma, no markup. And not every character uses two bytes, either.
> And I can use Umlauts (äöü) and Arabic (???.????) if I want to.

I see an a-umlaut, o-umlaut, u-umlaut. But for the Arabic, I see three
question marks, a period, and four question marks.

Running slrn version 0.9.7.4 on Linux. My terminal is a PuTTY SSH
connection from a Windows box. slrn --version produces:

Slrn 0.9.7.4 [2002-03-13]
S-Lang Library Version: 1.4.7
Compiled at: Jan 12 2003 08:31:04
Operating System: Linux

 COMPILE TIME OPTIONS:
  Backends: +nntp +slrnpull +spool
  External programs / libs: -inews -ssl -uudeview
  Features: +charset_mapping +decoding +emphasized_text +end_of_thread
    +fake_refs +gen_msgid -grouplens +mime -msgid_cache +piping +rnlock
    +slang +spoilers -strict_from +verbatim_marks
 DEFAULTS:
  Default server object:     nntp
  Default posting mechanism: nntp
  Default character set:     isolatin
 SUPPORTED CHARACTER SETS:
  isolatin ibm850 ibm852 ibm737 NeXT koi8



Looking at a hex dump of this post, I see that your Unicode characters
have become ASCII question marks in my reply. Bad slrn! No biscuit!

-- 
Robin Munn <rmunn at pobox.com> | http://www.rmunn.com/ | PGP key 0x6AFB6838
-----------------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
"Remember, when it comes to commercial TV, the program is not the product.
YOU are the product, and the advertiser is the customer." - Mark W. Schumann




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