Re: CP1252 under Unix

From: Markus Kuhn (Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Mar 24 2000 - 13:46:45 EST


Frank da Cruz wrote on 2000-03-24 18:30 UTC:
> That's fine for browsers (except Lynx!).

Lynx can easily recode incoming CP1252 and Unicode-NCR HTML files into
UTF-8 and then output them on xterm, which does now support the full
MES-3 repertoire and more with UTF-8.

> But most serious access to Unix
> is text based -- that's why we like it: it has a shell, etc, that lets us
> do what we want. Shells are accessed by terminals (including Xterm, which
> follows ISO 2022). Terminals don't like character sets with graphics in C1.
> So why should their use be encouraged in Unix?

I do not argue that CP1252 should be used locally under Unix. However it
is fully acceptable in MIME messages, which can easily be recoded to
UTF-8 before they are archived in the local file system.

Unix users should not be scared any more of CP1252-repertoire
characters, especially not when they come UTF-8 encoded. They should
more see it as the first step towards more complete UTF-8 support. I
want to see lots of U+2018/19 quotation marks etc. used in daily Unix
practice, such that these important everyday English language characters
get soon as ubiquitously supported as the ASCII repertoire under Unix.

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:00 EDT