Re: UTF-8 in Netscape

From: David Goldsmith (goldsmith@apple.com)
Date: Thu Jul 17 1997 - 19:55:59 EDT


>Be aware, that UTF-8-Mail cannot be transported by any IBM mainframe
>running EBCDIC, since EBCDIC makes use of 64 control characters. And there
>are still many of such beasts left in the email network, many of them
>running listserv and distributing high duty mailing lists.
>
>UTF-7,5 may pass through, but I won't bet on anything but pure ASCII. And
>even this is sometimes mangled (specially the circumflex).

This is why I mentioned BITNET. It may be 8-bit clean in one sense, but
it will gleefully mangle stuff nonetheless (read the original documents
on Base64 encoding for the gory details). This is why UTF-7 has a
"conservative" form which only uses the subset of ASCII which BITNET will
leave alone.

David Goldsmith
Architect
International, Text, and Graphics Group
Apple Computer, Inc.
goldsmith@apple.com



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