Re: 8859-1, 8859-15, 1252 and Euro

From: Frank da Cruz (fdc@watsun.cc.columbia.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 10 2000 - 10:11:41 EST


A Thu, 10 Feb 2000 06:30:41 -0800 (PST) Alain LaBonté a écrit:
> À 22:04 2000-02-09 -0800, Erik van der Poel a écrit:
> >If you don't use browsers in mainframe environments, then why are we
> >even talking about that here?
>
> Because texts can be copied and pasted in email messages from HTML files
> and then inevitably they can go to a mainframe environment (or UNIX) and
> back... Data loss guaranteed if the C1 space is used for graphic
> characters. In French this is dramatic (for the EURO sign as well, and for
> Finnish too).
>
It's hard to believe that in the year 2000 we are still talking as though
we don't understand why the C1 area should not be used for graphic
characters in data communications protocols. PC and Windows code pages
are fine for use inside the PC for which they are designed, but not for
data interchange. This fly in the face of every international standard,
including Unicode and ISO 10646, which have taken great care to leave the
C1 area alone, and for good reasons such as the ones Alain has mentioned.
That MIME allows one to put any old character set in the content of a
message or web page is a travesty, and not an excuse to do it.

- Frank



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