ietf-822
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Re: 7/8-bit conversion vs. bouncing

1991-07-11 13:38:39
The IETF-822 and IETF-SMTP lists have generated 3000 pages worth of
printout since the St. Louis meeting (yes, I, the fool, printed it all
out), and _still_ we're discussing "European vs American".  I almost
can't believe it!  I _can_ believe it when I see that Keld is the
driving force behind this whining.  Stop it.

Keld Simonsen wrote, on July 2nd:

: I think that many of my fellow European collegues feel the same
: like me, this was stated explicitely at the NETF meeting in Stockholm
: (where the multipart messaging was simply explicitely removed from
: the agenda because of lack of interest) and many other times from
: Europeans.

We should not underestimate the primitive level of e-mail for Europeans,
and the effect it has upon interest in future uses (when the power of the
system is enhanced sufficiently to make people who are hung up in narrow
character set issues relax a bit).

I'm European, and I don't think 8-bit SMTP data path is a matter of any
merit at all.  Sure, it would be kind of neat IF we had it.  We don't,
and if the volume on these mailing lists is going to keep up, we will
never get it, either.

I *hate* the quoted-printable solution, because I think it ceases to be
elegant about half-way into ISO 8859-1.  I'd much rather have a code
table at the beginning of a message, or one referred to by some header
token, which gave the name of characters not in ASCII and their code.
(Note: this is different from ISO 2022, which I proposed earlier.)
More on this later.

: I know that we are only Europeans and that other people
: may think otherwise.

"What do you mean `we', Paleface?"

Keld, are you one of those who think that (a) Europeans are inherently
inferior to Americans, or (b) European are inherently superior to
Americans?  I've heard so many comments from you whose only content is
"I'm European, he's/you're not", that I'm getting sick and tired of it.

Let's solve this on technical merit and let any relevance of the
continent from which a person posts be left to the racists.

</Erik>