Edward Cherlin wrote on 1999-07-04 09:16 UTC:
> Frank's "limited experience" is not youth but insularity. He cites
> practices current on UNIX systems as though they applied universally.
>
> I have used UNIX, DOS, Windows, CP/M, Apple ][, IBM mainframes via
> timesharing, and several other kinds of computers, dealing with character
> set problems well outside Frank's range of experience.
Just for the record, let me quickly introduce your discussion partners:
Frank da Cruz <fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu>, whom you attested "limited
experience" in the field of inter-platform plaintext exchange, is the
author of KERMIT. KERMIT is a widely ported classic terminal emulator
with build-in file transmission software. It is most likely available on
*all* the platforms that you have ever used, and as the implementor of
KERMIT's text-file transmission mechanism, Frank certainly had to worry
about the plain text file conventions used on all these systems. He his
probably one of the most qualified experts on matters related to the
emulation of historic data-entry terminals and inter-platform plain-text
format convention. (In case you have never used or heard about KERMIT,
please draw the appropriate conclusions regarding the scope of your own
experience.)
Thomas Dickey <dickey@clark.net> is the maintainer of xterm, probably
the currently most widely used VT100 terminal emulator on this planet,
and the application that primarily has to process all plaintext on Unix
workstations in the end. (If you have never heard of xterm, same
conclusion.)
Markus
-- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
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