On Sat, 3 Dec 1994 Harald(_dot_)T(_dot_)Alvestrand(_at_)uninett(_dot_)no wrote:
An expert system has the interesting property that it sometimes fails.
(thereby mimicing a human expert)
Think about crossposting, for instance: if I crosspost between
no.general (default 8859-1) and fj.editors.mule, which default should
I assume?
Good question. Although I note that if such a cross-post occurred, the
message probably has a 98% chance of being in English (i.e. US-ASCII).
Since US-ASCII is a subset of both ISO-8859-1 and ISO-2022-JP, it will
display right whichever default you choose. For other cases, more expert
system rules are needed:
If a message is cross-posted, choose the default for the first
newsgroup on the Newsgroups line and give the user the
option to choose a different default for that message.
Explicit labelling is IMHO the best way for the *sender*.
Since not all senders have followed this path, the *recipient* needs
an expert system (but can tolerate the occasional failure).
Exactly. In the context of receiving messages, the expert system is only
needed for non-MIME messages. In the context of sending messages, the
expert system is only needed for choosing a default which will minimise
the impact on non-MIME recipients. The message would still be labelled
for MIME recipients.
This thread is starting to get a little away from the purpose of this
working group.
Cheers,
Rhys.
--
Rhys Weatherley, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
E-mail: rhys(_at_)fit(_dot_)qut(_dot_)edu(_dot_)au "net.maturity is knowing
when NOT to followup"