From: kostis@frsmic.enet.dec.com (Kosta Kostis)
Subject: Re: Newsreader supporting MIME
Summary: Things may be viewed in many ways...
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 12:31:51 GMT


In article <3949@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca>, clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes...
>In article <1992Nov6.171225.4595@rdg.dec.com> kostis@frsmic.enet.dec.com (Kosta Kostis) writes:
>>>minor benefit of being 8-bit clean.
> 
>>It may be a minor benefit for you, but it's not minor for people outside
>>the english speaking community - and that's the majority in the world.
> 
>This may well be true, but irrelevant - something like 80% of the people
>on the net are in the USA.

Irrelevant? I'd call that ignorance! There are much less US citizens in
the world than let's say european. Did you ever notice that?  8-)
And the Internet, especially in europe is growing real fast - I'd guess
faster than the US part of it. Maybe it won't take much time and less
than 50% of the people on the net reside in the USA.  ;-)
Nah, it *will* take some time - but we're coming...  8-)

>>Poor maintenance is no excuse. If all things would go that slow, imagine
>>the impact on science and todays life. Well, I just think we should move
>>our lazy b*s and do something about it.
> 
>All things *do* go that slow.  Or slower.  How long was it before the
>Wright brother's invention was widely used?

If you don't push things (again and again), *nothing* ever moves.
Should "all things go that slow" be the US mentality nowadays, I doubt
your new president will be successful in any way... Come on!
I can't believe that. Are you already that tired over there?  :-)
Hey, wasn't it the USA who brought the first man to the moon some
time ago?

>Probably half of the installed base is with software that isn't supported
>at all any more.  And often not actively maintained either.  What you're
>asking them to do is completely replace what they have with different
>software, when they may no longer have anybody who understands what
>is currently there works, let alone newer stuff.  That isn't easy.

Let it be "not easy" - just do it.  ;-)  We do it, too.  8^)

>>My main problem with this is not even 5 years old software, but that there
>>is software like BNews which still maintained but isn't 8 Bit clean.
>>That's ignorance.
> 
>BNews hasn't been supported in depth for at least four years.  The last patch
>to it was about three years ago.  The author of Bnews hasn't been running
>it for at least two.  Bnews at the very latest patch level has a number of
>identified bugs.  And some of them cause grief to many sites when tripped
>over.

Well, OK. It's *not* maintained anymore, but still distributed, it's close
to collapse, so replace it. News software tends not to cost any licence
fees, "just" the time and space to install... Should be really worth it to
have software "up to date" or close to that...

>The fact of the matter is that there are many sites running software even
>older than 5 years.  Rick's latest survey turned up a number of 2.9 Bnews
>sites, and that was several revs before even moderated groups were supported!
>And on UNIX, Bnews, at revisions 4 years or older, still makes up nearly
>half of the installed base.

What do you call "a number"?
How "important" were those sites (in terms of affected news article flow)?
Are you sure one can't convince the system administrators to get and install
new software? Has anyone bothered to try that? And again, and again?

>Railing about poor maintenance is simply not going to do any good.  To
>be used, 8bit penetration must be near 100%.  Maybe in a couple of years
>it will be practical to ship 8 bit when INN and C news cover the vast
>majority.  Then it's just the big non-UNIX crowd with some software even
>more primitive than B.2.9 to worry about.

If you don't start to go into the "right" direction, you will never get to
where you want to go.

Don't worry about the "big non-UNIX" crowd. I use DOS Waffle 1.65 at home
with a self made patch converting between IBM Code Page 437/850 and
ISO 8859-1. UUCP-software for the Atari ST (HERMES) has a converter
already build in. Amigas use ISO 8859-1 by definition (native character set).
Converters for Macs shouldn't be that much of a problem...
At least some X/Windows fonts do support ISO 8859-1.

All I'm asking for, is that those who need 8 Bits to encode theirs mails
and articles should be given the chance to do that. The transport mechanisms
have allways been 8 Bit channels - just RFC 821/822 invented the cripeling.

I think I better worry about people that are convinced there's no way to
change things (in a chaotic network)... =;^)

Never mind and Slinte

	Kosta
-- 
Kosta Kostis, Talstrae 25, D-6074 Rdermark 3, Germany
kostis@frsmic.enet.dec.com                              (work)
kosta@blues.kk.sub.org                                  (home)
sw-authors: please support ISO 8859-1   =aeoeueAEOEUEss