To: Rick Troth <troth(_at_)rice(_dot_)edu>, scs(_at_)adam(_dot_)mit(_dot_)edu,
moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu
Subject: Re: printable wide character (was "multibyte") encodings
Date: Thu, 13 May 93 22:35:26 CDT
Keith, you left this part out:
The point is
that the richtext parser's front-end "get a character"
primitive would get a wide, multioctet character. (The
special '<' character would therefore appear as a 16- or
32-bit quantity with value 60).
This is the part to which I specifically agree, saying:
Yes!
The reasoning is:
Recalling the proper
definition of "byte", however, we can if we wish continue
to think about byte streams, as long as we remember that
a byte may have more than 8 bits. ...
And if SMTP remains an "octet stream", fine.
(I think we're closer in agreement than you think we are)
Perhaps I was being imprecise.
I am specifically opposed to having the canonical form of a MIME
content-type be anything other than an octet-stream. This implies
that all content-transfer-encoders take an octet-stream as input.
Keith
"You can have any kind of byte you want, as long as it is 8 bits :-)"